CAPTORS AND CAPTIVES
One morning just before _Appell_, a Frenchman came along the passage and
announced in each room that Colonel Tardieu was not going out to
_Appell_ that morning, and would be obliged if other officers would
remain in their rooms when the bell went. We did not know exactly what
the reason was, and I don't know now, but I think the Colonel had some
right on his side--as much right as we usually had in Fort 9. Soon after
this announcement a deputation of Russians waited on Major Gaskell to
find out what the English intended to do. I may as well say here that
Gaskell and most of the other Englishmen (myself included) did not
altogether approve of this rowdyism on _Appell_, as we thought it might
lead to serious restriction of our exercise and consequently of our
chances of escaping, which was of course the only thing worth
considering.
As the Russian colonel insisted on acting as interpreter for the
deputation, the discussion lasted a quarter of an hour before we
understood that the Russians thought it would be better to go out, as
they considered it probable that the Germans would treat our refusal as
an organized mutiny. But they were, they said, prepared to follow our
lead.
Gaskell and I then went off to see Colonel Tardieu. The Colonel said
that, though it was best for us to stick together, this case was a
purely personal matter, and we could please ourselves--he could only say
that he was not going out, and that the French would follow his lead.
Gaskell and I determined to compromise by leaving the matter unsettled,
but to go out ourselves to _Appell_ very late. In this way it was quite
impossible for the Germans to prove organized mutiny against us, and
equally impossible to hold _Appell_ outside--and the whole thing could
easily be put down to mismanagement and the lack of clear orders on the
part of the Germans. This was, in fact, just what happened. The Germans
were furious, but we pointed out that they had given so many
contradictory orders about _Appell_ that no one knew what they wanted.
They soon saw that there was no case against us for organized mutiny and
let the matter drop. The real trouble was that the Commandant was a man
who was simply made to be ragged.
A more unfortunate choice for a C.O. of a _strafe_ camp can scarcely be
imagined. He was a short, thick-set, dark man, about fifty years old,
with a large drooping moustache and an inclination to stoutness. His
hair was rather long, and he wore pince-nez for reading. I think he had
only been C.O. of Fort 9 for a few months when we first went there, but
some of the prisoners had known him when he had been in command of
another camp, and he then had the reputation for being a kindly and
sympathetic commandant. But when we first knew him constant badgering
had already soured his temper. He was rather like a schoolmaster whose
form has got quite out of control, uncertain whether his boys were
intending to be insolent or not. He never pretended to stand on his
dignity--his appearance and behavior stamped him as an amiable
shopkeeper cursed with occasional fits of violent temper. Then he laid
himself open to be ragged so dreadfully. Although he knew little about
the business of the fort and had to appeal to his _Feldwebel_ on almost
every point, yet he insisted on attending personally to nearly every
officer who came into the bureau. The _Feldwebel_ and two extremely
efficient N.C.O.'s, known as Abel and the "Blue Boy," really managed the
fort.
This reminds me of a most amusing caricature of the _Feldwebel_ ordering
the C.O. about, which was pinned up in a conspicuous place. I think a
_Reclamation_ or official letter was sent in to General Peters,
protesting against this state of affairs, for which the author got a few
days' "jug." A few days' "jug" was just a farce. The cells were always
full, and when you got your _Bestrafung_ you were put on a waiting list
and did your period of solitary confinement from three to five months
later. One angry Frenchman wrote a furious _Reclamation_ talking of
justice and favoritism because Oliphant had been allowed to do a "slice
of four days' jug" out of his turn on the list. A sheaf of
_Reclamations_ (the word was pronounced in either German or French way)
used to go in daily to General Peters on every conceivable subject, from
serious grievances to humorous insults, from a protest against the
filthy habits of Bavarian sentries to an accusation of poisoning a pet
rabbit.
Some men used to spend a great deal of their time writing _Reclamations_
conveying veiled insults to the Germans. It seemed to me rather a waste
of time, but they caused a great deal of amusement. It was just like
composing a sarcastically offensive letter to a Government department.
Some of the results were really very humorous and witty, but I am afraid
they were wasted on the Bosche, and I have no doubt they all went
straight into Peters' wastepaper-basket--at any rate, I never heard of a
_Reclamation_ having any effect except three days' "jug" for the author
of the most offensive ones.
When we first came to the fort we were told that some of the French had
sworn an oath to drive the Commandant off his head. He was pretty far
gone. Some of the Englishmen, chiefly Oliphant, Medlicott, and Buckley,
with these Frenchmen, used to get an enormous amount of amusement by
baiting the old fool.
I remember once a conversation something as follows:--
_Frenchman._--"The German food you give us is very bad."
_Commandant._--"Es tut mir sehr leid, aber----"
_Frenchman._--"And it is impossible for any one but a Bavarian to eat it
without wine."
"Was meinen Sie, das duerfen Sie nicht sagen," answered the Commandant
furiously.
"Why won't you give us wine?" shouted the Frenchman.
"You have got no right to speak to me like that."
"And you don't know how to speak to a French officer; it's disgusting
that when you give," etc.
"Sofort aus dem Bureau gehen?" (Will you go out of the bureau?)
Both start shouting simultaneously:
"Why won't you give us wine?"
"Aus dem Bureau ... I will report you to General Peters."
"Je m'en fous de General Peters--I won't go out till you speak politely
to a French officer."
"Go out of this bureau immediately when I tell you to."
"I won't go till you learn to speak politely to me."
The Commandant then rushed at the telephone and pretended to wind the
handle violently, but without really calling up at all. He put the
instrument to his ear and said:
"Herr General Peters. Are you there? I am Hauptmann L'Hirsch. There is a
Frenchman in the office who won't go away. What shall I do?"
Slight pause for Peter's reply. Then to the Frenchman in French:
"The General says that you must leave the bureau immediately."
"Did the General speak politely?"
"Yes."
"Eh bien je sors."
I have already given a description of a scene which took place the first
time I ever entered the bureau--and these sort of scenes used to happen
daily and hourly. Whenever the Commandant lost his temper, which he did
without fail every time, he threw his arms about, clenched his fists,
gesticulated furiously, and shouted at the top of his voice. Soon after
the Bojah affair, which I will describe later, when rows of this sort
multiplied exceedingly, he was removed from the fort nothing less than a
raving maniac with occasional sane intervals. In the court-martial which
followed the Bojah case, the witnesses for the defense attempted to
prove that the insane behavior of Hauptmann L'Hirsch was the main cause
of all trouble in Fort 9. In an impartial court of justice, which this
court-martial was not, I have not the smallest doubt that they would
have succeeded in proving this, owing to L'Hirsch's behavior during the
trial.
The food given us by the Germans was not only very nasty, but there was
not enough of it to keep a man alive. Perhaps this is an exaggeration,
as I know that a man can keep alive, though weak, with very little food.
But lack of food to this extent, combined with the hardships of a winter
at Fort 9, would, I am sure, be enough to kill most strong men. Every
day each man received a loaf of bread, shaped like a bun, about 4-1/2
inches across the bottom and 2 inches in depth. It was of a dirty brown
color and, though unpleasant, it was eatable. Some even said they liked
it. I don't know what it was made of, but I should think from the taste
that rye, sawdust, and potatoes formed the ingredients, the latter
predominating. It was sometimes very stodgy, and sometimes sour, but on
the whole was better bread than we received either at Guetersloh or
Clausthal. Later on, the size of the loaf was reduced by more than a
third and the quality deteriorated very much, the percentage of sawdust
and other unpleasant ingredients being much increased. We never ate it
unless we were very hard up, but, if left for a few days, it became as
hard as a brick and was most useful as a firelighter. I remember an
officer telling us that when he was a prisoner at Magdeburg in the early
days of the war, the English prisoners had started playing rugger in the
exercise yard with a piece of bread that had dropped in the mud. There
was a terrible scene of indignation and excitement among the Germans.
The guard turned out--fixed bayonets--charged--rescued the
loaf--arrested every one, and I don't remember what happened after that,
but all the criminals were severely punished. It must have been terrible
to have been a prisoner in those early days. I heard hundreds of stories
from the poor devils who were caught in 1914. Some of these stories were
funny, some were filthy, that is to say, funny to a German mind, and
some were enough to make a man swear, as many have sworn, never to speak
to a German in peace time and never to show mercy to one in war.[2]
Besides this ration of bread, we were given a small basin of soup
daily--it was just greasy hot water with some vegetable, nearly always
cabbage, in it. The amount of meat we received used to provide each of
us with one helping of meat once every ten days. Two or three times
during my stay at Ingolstadt I remember the meat was quite good, and, if
it was eatable at all, we enjoyed it enormously, as fresh meat was such
a welcome change after the tinned food which we ate continually.
Usually, however, it was impossibly tough, and sometimes merely a piece
of bone and gristle. We tried keeping it for several days, but it always
got high before it got tender. At the end of my time there, when Moretti
had been elected chef of Room 42, we always used to make soup from it.
Moretti used it five times for soup before he would throw it away, and
announced, as he put the soup on the table, "La premiere," or "La
troisieme seance," or "La cinquieme et derniere seance," whichever it
was. The Germans also gave us a certain amount of perfectly undrinkable
acorn coffee, and sugar at the rate of about two lumps per man per day.
Sometimes they gave us some very nasty beans and sometimes some really
horrible dried fish--I think it was haddock. It was very salt, and stank
so that we used always to throw it away immediately--we simply could not
stand it in the room. Room 39 used to hang all their fish outside the
window during the cold weather--a revolting sight. It was their reserve
rations, they said. Some of the Russians managed to eat their fish, and
I believe there was a French room which had a special method of treating
it, but it was generally voted uneatable throughout the fort. About one
moderate sized potato per day per head concluded the food rations. This
may seem a fairly generous allowance of food, even if it was not of very
high quality, but in reality it was very little indeed. A day's rations
would work out something as follows: one potato, one small plateful of
hot-water soup, one cup acorn coffee, one lump of sugar, two mouthfuls
of fish, one mouthful of meat, four or five beans, and the loaf of
bread. If any one thinks he can live on that, I should like him to try
for a few months in cold weather. We had not many luxuries and comforts
in Fort 9, and we did look forward to and enjoy the good things to eat
that came from home. It is only people who have never been hungry who
can pretend to be indifferent about food--that is to say, if they are
well and in hard training as we were. The arrival of the parcel cart was
hailed with enormous enthusiasm. I think our people at home would have
been well repaid for all the trouble they took in packing the parcels if
they could have seen the pleasure it gave us receiving them. Excitement
reached a high pitch when we knew that a map or compass was hidden in
one of the parcels.
All the work of the fort--cleaning, cooking, emptying dust-bins,
etc.--was done by French and Russian orderlies under the orders of
German N.C.O.'s, and when our parcels came they were taken out of the
cart and wheeled in on a hand-cart from the outside courtyard to the
packet office. There they were sorted by Abel, a German N.C.O., with the
help of a French orderly. When this had been done, usually the day after
the arrival of the parcels, a list was put up of those who had received
any, just inside the main gateway, on the official notice board. The
giving out of the _paquets_ was a pretty lengthy process, as each was
opened by Abel or an assistant Hun and carefully searched. Each wing
alternately was served first, and an orderly warned each room when the
parcels for that room would be given out. This prevented there being a
long queue of officers waiting outside the _paquet_ office. A sentry
stood outside the door and admitted three officers at a time. A couple
of yards inside the door there was a counter right across the room, and
on the far side two German N.C.O.'s stood, each armed with a knife and a
skewer--the first for opening the parcels, the latter for probing the
contents for forbidden articles. You signed for your parcels and paid 5
Pf. or 10 Pf. for the cost of carting them up.
The Germans, after showing you the address on the outside, cut them open
and examined the contents, sometimes minutely and sometimes carelessly.
Abel was an oily little brute, very efficient; we hated him and he hated
us with a bitter hatred--not without reason on both sides. I think he
hated the French more than he did the English, but he hated Medlicott
more than all the rest put together. About two months before I left Fort
9 a rumor went round, to the intense joy of every one, that Abel was
under orders for the West Front, and we all wished him luck, and he knew
what we meant. Abel was just a bit too clever, and consequently got done
in the eye sometimes; but I must own that he had a tremendous amount of
work to do and did it very quickly and efficiently. His very capable
assistant was the "Blue Boy," whose chief job was to lurk about the fort
and try and catch us out. He was always standing in dark corners and
turning up unexpectedly. It was his job to tap the bars of our windows
with a sledge hammer every three days, and he took an active part in the
pursuit if any one escaped.
He was not so clever as Abel, but he had more time for spying and was
more persistent. It always seemed to me to be worth keeping on fairly
decent terms with these two. It was only necessary to refrain from being
offensive to be on better terms than most people in the fort.
It was very different with that swine of a _Feldwebel_. He never walked
about without a revolver in his pocket, and he never came alone down any
dark passage; "et il avait raison," as the French said, as he had
several pretty narrow shaves with brickbats as it was. At one time those
tins and jars, such as butter, jam, quaker-oats, which had been packed
and sealed in a shop, were passed over to us unopened, and only
home-made and home-packed articles were examined. Later on, however,
everything had to be turned out on a plate and the Germans kept the tin.
Although very nearly all our parcels arrived eventually, they used to
come rather irregularly, and several times as many as twenty to thirty
parcels would arrive for the six of us who were in one room.
Consequently, if all the food had been opened immediately, much of it
would have gone bad before we could eat it. To obviate this difficulty,
the Germans made shelves in the parcel office, and each room or mess
could leave there the food which it did not need for the moment.
At first sight it would seem that this arrangement would make the
smuggling through of forbidden goods almost impossible, or at any rate
that our difficulties would be greatly increased. In reality the
business was simplified. As long as we knew in which tin or small
package the map, compass, or what-not was coming, we could make fairly
certain, by methods which I shall describe later, of getting it without
it ever being opened by the Germans.
After _Appell_ all the fort except the English had dinner. This was the
hour when the potato, wood, oil, and coal stealing fatigues did their
duty. For some weeks our French orderly used to steal potatoes for us as
we needed them. He knew the ropes very well, as he had been in the fort
for more than a year. One day, however, he said that this stealing in
small quantities was a mistake, and that it would be safer to have one
big steal once a month or so. Four of us, under the leadership of
Carpentier, stole eight small sacks without much difficulty. It was just
a matter of knowing the habits of our jailers and timing it accurately.
The Germans were not so suspicious in those days as they became later.
There was a small trap-door 6 feet up the wall in the central passage,
which Carpentier knew how to open. He got in, filled the bags, and
passed them out to us. To carry the full bags back to our rooms we had
to pass under the eyes of a sentry. But that is just the best of a
German sentry. He had had no orders to spot prisoners carrying bags, and
he had also no imagination, so he took no notice.
Between the hours of twelve and two we did our lessons. From two till
four we played hockey or tennis. Tea was at four, when some Frenchmen
usually came in to see us. _Appell_ took place and the doors of the
courtyards were shut about half an hour before sunset. After this
_Appell_, till the evening _Appell_ at nine o'clock, a sentry was left
in our passage; but we could still communicate with the other wing.
Bridge, reading, lessons, lectures, and preparation for dinner took
place during this period. The great amusement was lamp-stealing. During
the winter the Germans allowed us, as we thought, a totally insufficient
supply of oil, which only enabled us to burn our lamps for four hours
out of the twenty-four. This meant going to bed at nine, which was of
course ridiculous. The gloomy passages of the fort were mainly lit by
oil lamps, and from these we used to steal the oil systematically. After
a month or two the Germans realized that this was going on and reduced
the number of lamps, and in the long passage where it was obviously
impossible to stop us stealing oil they put acetylene lamps. Two lamps
to a passage 70 yards long was not a generous allowance.
Between 5 and 9 p.m. the sentry in the passage had special orders, a
loaded rifle, and a fixed bayonet, to see that these lamps were not
stolen. As all the sentries had been stuffed up by the _Feldwebel_ with
horrible stories about the murderous and criminal characters of the
prisoners, it is not surprising that each sentry showed the greatest
keenness in preventing us from stealing the lamps and leaving him, an
isolated Hun, in total darkness and at the mercy of the prisoners. As
any man came out of his room and passed one of the lamps, which were on
brackets about 7 feet from the ground, the sentry would eye him
anxiously and hold himself in readiness to yell "Halt!" and charge up
the passage. The lamps were about 30 yards apart, and someone would come
up, walk up to a lamp, and stop beneath it--the sentry would advance on
him, and when he was sufficiently attracted, the officer would take out
his watch and look at it by the light of the lamp. Meanwhile a second
officer would come quickly out of his room and take down the other lamp.
As soon as the sentry perceived this he would immediately charge, with
loud yells of "Halt! Halt!" but as he turned both lamps would be blown
out simultaneously, and the officers would disappear into their
respective rooms, leaving the passage in total darkness. The amusing
part was that this used to happen every night, and the sentries knew it
was going to happen; but against tactics of this sort, varied
occasionally, of course, but always ending with the lights being blown
out simultaneously, they were quite powerless!
The evening, after the sentry had been withdrawn at 9 p.m., was spent in
the ordinary occupations of gambling, reading, tracing maps, making
German uniforms and pork-pie caps, with occasional fancy-dress balls or
impromptu concerts. Sometimes mysterious lights would be seen in odd
corners of the passage, where someone was industriously working at
making a hole through the wall, removing the blocks of stone noiselessly
one by one; and sometimes one would run up against a few men round a
wonderful structure of tables and chairs in the middle of the passage,
where someone was climbing up the skylight to inspect the sentries on
their beats on the top parapet, but usually all was peace and quiet till
about 11 p.m. At that hour the sentries were supposed to make us put out
the lights in our rooms, but when they found that we paid little or no
attention to repeated cries of "Licht ausmachen," and as there was no
method, short of firing through the bars into a lighted bedroom, to
make us put them out, they eventually gave up these attempts, and,
except for an occasional very offensive or conscientious sentry, we put
out our lamps or candles when we wished.
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF FORT 9 INGOLSTADT]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: The Germans varied their treatment of their prisoners
inversely with their prospects of victory. When things were going badly
with them--during most of 1916, for instance--much unnecessary harshness
towards their prisoners was relaxed. When once more their hopes of final
victory were raised by the invasion of Roumania and the checking of the
Somme offensive, the poor prisoners had a rough time. Such is the way
with bullies.]