SHORT RATIONS AND MANY RIOTS
The weather became colder and colder, and for the next month we seldom
had less than 27 deg. of frost at night, and in the day time anything up to
20 deg. in spite of the fairly frequent appearance of the sun. The
countryside was covered by a few inches of snow, now in the crisp and
powdery condition seldom seen except in Switzerland and the colder
countries. After the experience of Medlicott and myself it was generally
agreed in the fort that escape was almost impossible, unless a very
considerable start could be obtained; so the greater number of us
settled down to face the not altogether pleasant domestic problems of
Fort 9.
Our allowance of coal was found to be quite insufficient to keep the
room tolerably warm. It was the same in every room in the fort. Repeated
requests for an increased allowance having as usual had no effect, we
proceeded to tear down all the available woodwork in the fort and in our
rooms and burn it in the stoves. We lived literally in a solid block of
ice. Just before the long frost had set in, the ground above and round
our rooms had been soaking wet, and the walls and floors had been
streaming with moisture. Then came the frost, and everything was frozen
solid, and outside in the passage an icy blast blew continually, and in
places beneath broken ventilators a few inches of frozen snow lay for
weeks unthawed inside the fort. That passage was, without exception, the
coldest place I have ever known.
Down the walls of each of our rooms ran a flue in the stonework,
intended to drain the earth above the rooms. For over six weeks there
was a solid block of ice in it from top to bottom, in spite of the fact
that the flue was in the common wall of two living-rooms.
We lived continually in our great coats and all the warm underclothes we
possessed; we ourselves seldom, and our allies never, opened windows,
and we pasted up cracks and holes; but still we remained cold, and
crouched all day round our miserable stoves. Mueller's exercises,
skipping, and wood, coal, and oil stealing were recreations and means of
keeping warm and keeping up our spirits. On top of this came the famine.
For the last few months we had been so well and regularly supplied with
food from home that we had never thought of eating the very unpalatable
food given us by the Germans, and had at length come to an agreement
whereby they gave us full pay--in my case 100 marks per month--and no
longer supplied us with food. Up to the time of this agreement they had
deducted 42 marks monthly, and this extra money was quite useful. Some
time before Christmas we were warned that there would be a ten days'
stoppage of our parcels in order to allow of the more rapid delivery of
the German Christmas mail to their troops. In consequence we had all
written home asking that double parcels should be sent us for the two
weeks preceding Christmas. However, Christmas passed and parcels came
with almost the same regularity as they had always done. Christmas
festivities, and the knowledge that double parcels were on their way,
induced us to draw rather heavily on our reserve store. Then came the
stoppage. Daily we looked anxiously for the parcel cart which never
came. Reduced to our last half-dozen tins of food among six men we went
onto quarter rations, helped out from a large supply of stolen potatoes.
At length we had nothing whatever to eat but our daily ration of bread
and almost unlimited potatoes. No butter, no salt, no pepper. It would
not have mattered very much in warm weather, but in those conditions of
cold and discomfort in which we were living, hunger was rather hard to
bear.
A diet consisting entirely of butterless and saltless potatoes in
various forms became after three or four days extremely tedious. It is
quite impossible to eat enough of them to satisfy one's hunger. After a
gorge of potatoes one is distended but still hungry. I forget how long
the famine lasted--about ten days, I think, though I remember very well
the arrival of a cartload of parcels which relieved the situation just
when things began to get serious. It arrived on a Saturday, and the
Germans said that they would be given out on Monday, as a certain time
was necessary for sorting and registering the parcels. To starving men
this delay was quite intolerable, and the prisoners adopted such a
threatening attitude that the Commandant considered it wisest to give
out a small portion of the parcels to keep us going till Monday.
Of course we might have asked the Germans to supply us with food when we
were short, but I don't think such a course was contemplated seriously
by anybody.
Perhaps it may be considered that the kindly Germans, knowing that their
prisoners were nearing starvation, should have insisted on supplying us
with food. But the Germans of Fort 9 were not accustomed to confer
favors on us--if they had offered them we should have refused--and I
have no doubt that they considered a little hunger very good for us.
So much for the famine; our parcels for the rest of the time I was in
Germany arrived in large quantities.
About this time, on the strength of the convention agreed to between the
English and the German governments, we obtained from the very unwilling
Germans the privilege of going on walks for an hour or two a week on
parole.
For the rest of the time I was at Fort 9 the parties of English and
Russian prisoners, but not French, as I believe they had no such
convention with the Germans, exercised this privilege once and sometimes
twice a week, accompanied by an unarmed German N.C.O., who under these
circumstances sometimes became quite human.
The walks were very dull indeed, as the country round the fort is very
uninteresting. However, it was certainly a relief to get out of the
place every now and then. The only other way in which we ever got out of
the fort legitimately was when we were sent for from Ingolstadt for
preliminary inquiries concerning a court-martial, or to make a statement
concerning the vigilance of the sentry past whom we had escaped. We
always did our best to defend the unfortunate sentries, but I am afraid
that they almost invariably were heavily punished.
The next incident of any interest was a turbulent affair which has
become known to the one-time inmates of Fort 9 as the Bojah case. As I
was not involved to any great extent in this storm in a teacup, I have
rather a confused idea of what happened and why it happened.
I am not even sure how it started, but I believe the original cause was
a very mild and commonplace theft by Medlicott. A German carpenter was
putting up some shelves in one of our living-rooms when Medlicott and I
entered the room. Quite on the spur of the moment Medlicott picked up
the carpenter's pincers when his back was turned and handed them to me.
I put them in my pocket and walked out of the room and hid them. Before
the pincers were missed Medlicott also followed me out of the room. No
one else in the room had noticed the theft, and naturally denied it
indignantly when accused by the carpenter. Apparently the carpenter,
being very angry, instantly informed the Commandant. About ten minutes
later we heard a fearful row in the passage outside, and we all came out
of our rooms to see the fun. In the doorway of one of the rooms was a
seething, shouting mob consisting of several sentries with fixed
bayonets, the _Feldwebel_ and half a dozen prisoners, mostly French, and
the Commandant. They were all shouting at the top of their voices and
pushing, and the Commandant was brandishing his arms and generally
behaving like an enraged maniac. What the Frenchmen were doing in that
room I am not quite clear, but I believe they had come into the room in
which the carpenter had been after the latter had departed to report the
loss of the pincers to the Commandant. When the Commandant arrived with
his guard he insulted them and accused them of stealing the pincers and
then ordered them back to their rooms. The Frenchmen--Kicq, Derobiere,
Bojah, and a few others of the younger and more violent sort--were the
last people in the world to take this sort of thing lying down; besides
which they loved a row at any time for its own sake, and for once in a
way they had right on their side. They denied the accusation and
protested against the insults with some violence, and when ordered to
their rooms by the Commandant refused to go unless they first had an
apology. It is quite impossible to imagine the scene unless you realize
the character of the Commandant. The one outstanding feature was his
conspicuous lack of dignity and total inability to keep his temper. In
his quiet moments he was an incompetent, funny bourgeois shopkeeper;
when angry, as at this moment, he was a howling, raving madman. When the
Frenchmen refused to move, the Commandant apparently ordered the
_Feldwebel_ to arrest them, and confused shouting followed, in the midst
of which the Commandant hit the _Feldwebel_ and, I believe, though I did
not see it, also hit Bojah. There was a complete block in the doorway,
and the passage was also blocked by a hand-cart, which happened to be
there, and a large and cheering crowd of spectators. The sentries could
not get in, and the _Feldwebel_ and the Commandant, who were blocked in
the doorway, could not move, and every one continued to shout.
Medlicott, who loved this sort of thing, tried to barge into the
scrimmage, and I only just prevented him being struck by a bayonet. Then
Kicq managed to get close to the Commandant and call him a "cochon." Two
sentries effected his arrest. After that, I really don't know how things
got disentangled without bloodshed, but eventually the Germans retreated
amidst yells of derision, with Bojah, Kicq, and Derobiere in their
midst.
The English and French prisoners who had seen this affair decided that,
as the Commandant's conduct had been unbecoming that of an officer, we
would hold no further communication with him. Most of us were content to
act up to this passively, but when Batty Smith was summoned to the
office he informed the Commandant of the decision and walked out.
Buckley and Medlicott also took the earliest opportunity of doing the
same thing.
As soon as they entered the office, Buckley delivered the following
ultimatum. "Nous n'avons rien a faire avec vous parce que nous ne
pouvons pas vous considerer comme un officier." They then right-about
turned and marched out in military fashion, leaving the Commandant, as
he himself said in his evidence at the trial, "sprachlos" with
astonishment. Buckley's reason for speaking in French instead of German
was that he did not wish him to be able to call any of the office staff
as witness of what he had said. Soon afterwards Batty Smith was called
again to the bureau, arrested, and sent to prison in another fort, where
he remained in solitary confinement for over two months without any sort
of trial. Buckley and Medlicott were kidnapped in exactly the same way
and thrown into improvised cells in the fort. Medlicott had only been in
his cell for ten seconds, when he began, as usual, to think how to get
out of it. Above the door was a glass window by which light entered the
cell. The glass was already partially broken, so Medlicott standing on a
chair smashed the rest of it and somehow managed to climb out through
it. Soon afterwards Buckley also got out, and both returned to their
rooms. Five minutes later the Germans placed sentries in front of the
cell doors, but it was not till several hours afterwards that they found
to their intense surprise that the birds had already flown.
We got a good deal of amusement out of this incident; but a few days
later Medlicott was sent to another fort and Buckley was shut up in Fort
9. Both remained in close solitary confinement without any sort of trial
for over two months.
We never saw either Derobiere or Kicq again, though I have heard from
the latter since the armistice was signed. He had a series of perfectly
amazing adventures and hardships, and eventually escaped successfully,
after the sixth or seventh attempt, about the time of the armistice.
Of all the unusual happenings in Fort 9, that which I am about to
describe is perhaps the most remarkable. To steal a large iron-bound box
from the Commandant's bureau would be at any time a difficult feat, but
when it is considered that the only opportunity for the theft occurred
in the middle of the day, and also that the box contained compasses and
maps by the dozen, several cameras, solidified alcohol, censored books,
in fact all those things which we were most strictly forbidden to
possess, it must be owned that it was an extraordinary performance. It
was organized and carried out mainly by Russians with the help of a few
Frenchmen.
About 11.30 one morning, just after _Appell_, a Russian came into every
room along the corridor and informed us that there would be a general
search by the Germans at 12.15. We thanked him and hid all our forbidden
property, for a hint of this nature was not to be taken lightly at Fort
9. We had no idea what was going to happen, and only heard a detailed
account of it afterwards.
When a prisoner attempts to escape and is recaptured, he is taken by the
Germans into the bureau and searched, and for those articles--maps,
compasses, etc.--which are taken off him he is given a receipt and the
articles themselves are deposited, carefully ticketed with the owner's
name, in a large iron-bound wooden box which is kept in the depot
outside the fort.
When, however, prisoners are removed from one camp to another, the
articles belonging to those prisoners are handed to the N.C.O. in charge
of their escort and are deposited in the depot of the new camp.
This time two Russians were being sent to another camp, and the
iron-bound box in question had been brought into the bureau so that the
senior clerk could check the articles as they were handed over. The
theft of this box was carried out in the following manner. Just before
midday a party of Frenchmen, I believe, went into the bureau and had a
violent row with the Commandant--not an unusual occurrence, as I have
already explained. As the row became more and more heated, other
Frenchmen and Russians crowded into the bureau. A fearful scrimmage and
a great deal of shouting ensued, in the midst of which a party specially
detailed for the purpose carried the box unobserved out of the bureau
and into our "reading room," which was only a few doors away. There men
were waiting with hammers and other instruments. The lid was wrenched
open and the contents turned out on to the floor. Some then fell on the
box and broke and tore it into small pieces which others carried to the
different rooms and burnt immediately in the stoves. Others again
distributed to their owners or hid in previously prepared places the
contents of the box, so that within five minutes the box itself had
utterly disappeared and all its incriminating contents were in safe
hiding-places. The row, which had been gradually dying down, now
dissolved, and very soon afterwards the Germans discovered their loss.
The bells went and we were all ordered to our rooms. Then, amid shouts
of laughter from every room, two rather sullen and shamefaced Germans
searched vainly for an enormous box which had only been stolen five
minutes before and for which there was no possible hiding-place in any
of the rooms.
Most of us got back some valuable belongings. I got a compass and some
maps which had been taken off me at my first escape, but the most
amusing prize was my box of solidified alcohol, for which I now held two
receipts from the Germans as well as the article itself!