THE PRISONERS OF MAINZ
[Illustration: THE DOOM OF YOUTH.
[_Frontispiece._
]
THE PRISONERS OF
MAINZ
BY
ALEC WAUGH
AUTHOR OF
“THE LOOM OF YOUTH,” “RESENTMENT POEMS,” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
CAPTAIN R. T. ROUSSEL
(P.O.W. MAINZ)
LONDON
CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD.
1919
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. I,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
A BALLADE OF DEDICATION TO MY FELLOW-GEFANGENER
A. H. CHANDLER
_Fast locked within the citadel,_
_We’ve watched the hours of eight months fare_
_Slowly towards the evening bell,_
_And its cracked summons “clear the square.”_
_We’ve watched the stately barges bear_
_Seawards their teeming casks of wine,_
_As we sat in the alcove there,_
_Sipping the vintage of the Rhine._
_Ausgabe queues, we knew them well;_
_Those thin lines straggling out like hair,_
_Receding from an open cell,_
_And finishing, the Lord knows where;_
_And we have felt barbed wire tear_
_Our breeches’ loose and draggled twine;_
_But we’ve known hours less foul than fair,_
_Sipping the vintage of the Rhine._
_We could forget the sauerkraut smell,_
_Forget our weariness and share_
_The phantasies that flocked pell mell_
_About our unreal world; and there_
_Across the thick, smoke-laden air_
_Our loom of dreams was woven fine;_
_We tracked illusion to its lair,_
_Sipping the vintage of the Rhine._
ENVOI
_Archie, we neither know nor care
_What waits for you, what fate is mine.
_This has been ours--to be friends there,
_Sipping the vintage of the Rhine._
_A. W._
_Boulogne,
December 4th, 1918._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE GREAT OFFENSIVE 1
CHAPTER II
ON THE WAY TO THE RHINE 18
CHAPTER III
KARLSRUHE AND MILTON HAYES 37
CHAPTER IV
THE HUNGRY DAYS 46
CHAPTER V
THE PITT LEAGUE 63
CHAPTER VI
THE GERMAN ATTITUDE 91
CHAPTER VII
PARCELS 100
CHAPTER VIII
OUR GENERAL TREATMENT 116
CHAPTER IX
THE DAILY ROUND 129
CHAPTER X
HOW WE DID NOT ESCAPE 152
CHAPTER XI
THE ALCOVE 172
CHAPTER XII
HOW WE AMUSED OURSELVES 193
CHAPTER XIII
ARMISTICE DAYS 222
CHAPTER XIV
FREEDOM 246
INDEX 267
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_To face page_
THE DOOM OF YOUTH _Frontispiece_
“AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THE GERMANS CAME OVER” 16
OUR DAILY ROLL 48
THE ‘KANTINE’ AT MAINZ 56
THE QUEUE OUTSIDE THE PAYMASTER’S OFFICE 62
A PRISON CELL 104
A GALLANT ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE 162
THE BILLIARD-ROOM AT MAINZ 172
OUR PRISON SQUARE 194
“FIVE HUNDRED ODD OFFICERS WALKING ROUND THE SQUARE” 196
OUR LEADING LADY 214
LIEUT. MILTON HAYES AS “SILAS P. HAWKSHAW” 218
THE PRISONERS OF MAINZ
CHAPTER I
THE GREAT OFFENSIVE
§ 1
_March 21st, 1918._
The small box respirator, like the thirty-nine articles of the Faith,
should be taken on trust; one is quite prepared to believe in its
efficiency. Countless Base instructors have extolled it, countless memos
from Division have confirmed their panegyrics; and with these
credentials one carries it on one’s chest in a perfect faith; but one
has no wish to put its merits to the test. No one if he can help it
wishes to have his face surrounded by elastic and india-rubber, and his
nose clamped viciously by bent iron; and for that reason my chief memory
of March 21st was the prolonged discomfort of a gas-mask.
For from the moment that the barrage opened at 5 a.m. the air was full
of the insidious smell of gas. Masks were clapped on, and thus hooded
the machine-gunners fumbled desperately in search of stoppages; it was
an uncomfortable morning.
Being stationed about two miles north of the left flank of the German
attack, it was for us a much more comfortable morning than that spent by
most of those south of Arras. For when the mist began to rise, it
revealed no phantom figures; we did not find ourselves encircled, and
outflanked, with the cheerful alternatives of a perpetual rest where we
stood or of an indefinite sojourn on the wrong side of the line.
Everything presented a very orderly appearance. Far away on the right
was the dull noise of guns, but over the whole of the immediate front
spread out the peaceful prospect of a programme of trench routine.
“Seems as if Jerry weren’t coming over after all,” said the section
corporal.
“Looks like it,” I said.
“Then I suppose as we’d better clean things up a bit, Sir.”
“It would be as well.”
And the half-section settled down to the usual work of cleaning
themselves, their guns, and their position. The infantry on the right
were even more resigned to the uneventful.
“This ’ere offensive was all wind up, Sir,” said the man at the strombos
form, “they thought we was gettin’ a bit slack, I suppose, so they
thought this scare ’ud smarten us up a bit; but I knew it all along,
Sir; I’m too old a soldier to be taken in by that.”
The runner from Battalion, however, brought quite a different story.
“Been an attack all along the line, Arras to St. Quentin, but it’s been
broken up absolutely; never even got the front line.”
The man at the strombos form shifted suspiciously.
“They not bin trying to come over ’ere. I never seen no Germans,” which
was not surprising considering that from where he stood he could not
see the front line at all.
“No,” he went on, “there’s bin no offensive, and there won’t be one
neither. It’s all a wind up.”
At any rate, whether there had been an attempted attack or not, it
seemed quite clear that it had not got very far. With that comforting
certainty, I returned to the position, and having seen that the guns
were clean, descended into the dugout and went to sleep.
About two hours later a perspiring runner arrived. He was quite out of
breath from dodging whizzbangs, and was in consequence incapable of
logical statement. He said something about “Bullecourt.” The chit he
brought explained.
“BULLECOURT, ECOUST, NOREIL ARE IN THE
HANDS OF THE ENEMY”
It took at least five minutes to realise what this meant. To think that
they had got as far as that. It had seemed so delightfully safe. One
had walked along the Ecoust road in daylight, and there was a canteen at
Noreil. And then that glorious dugout in Railway Reserve that we had
covered with green canvas and festooned with semi-nudities from the
_Tatler_, to think of some lordly Prussian straddling across the table,
swigging champagne. It was an unspeakable liberty....
And then a little tardily followed the thought that Ecoust was not so
many miles from Monchy, and that if the Germans had got as far as that
on the right, there was very little reason why they should not do the
same to us--an unpleasant consideration. But still everything seemed so
delightfully quiet. Only an occasional whizzbang, or four--five--no one
would have thought there was a war on. Still Ecoust was not so very far
off; our parish had provided funds for a church army hut at St. Leger.
They had been collecting for it hard when I had been on leave. Well,
that must have gone west by now....
And at the top of the dugout I could hear the runner gradually
recovering his breath and explaining the strategic situation in spasms.
“You see, I heard the captin say to the adjutant, ‘Jones,’ he says, ‘the
Jerrys’ got as far as Bullecourt,’ and when I heard that ... well ... I
said to myself ... thank ’eavens I wasn’t there.”
“And you was there two months ago, Kid.”
“Where I was two months ago, as you say, and then I heard the captin
say....”
The remaining reflection was inaudible.
* * * * *
The next morning passed very quietly, so quietly that we had almost
forgotten the rumours of the preceding day. The limber corporal had
assured the ration party that there had been a counter-attack with
tanks, and that not only had Bullecourt been retaken, but Hendecourt and
Riencourt as well. There seemed no cause for panic. The rum had come up
as usual, and that was the main thing. After an afternoon of
belt-cleaning the subsection arranged itself as usual into night
reliefs, and then just before midnight came the news that the Division
was evacuating to the “third” line.
Whenever the military decide on a sudden action, they impart the
information in a delightfully inconsequent way. For instance, on the eve
of the Cambrai show, orders were sent round that in the case of an enemy
withdrawal limbers would proceed to Hendecourt along the road in the map
square U 29 B, and this request was then qualified by the statement, “It
is no good looking for roads; there are none.”
On this occasion the message was equally vague. It stated that the front
system would be evacuated at 3 a.m., and ordered that all guns, tripods,
belt-boxes, and ammunition would be immediately moved and stacked at the
ration dump pending the arrival of limbers. The chit then added,
“Secrecy is absolutely essential. On no account must the men know
anything of this.” The reasons on which the authorities based their
expectations that the men would move all their impedimenta to a ration
dump, and yet remain in complete ignorance of the operation, are
unfathomable. At any rate their hopes were unrealised. At the first
mention of dismounted guns, Private Hawkins had sniffed the secret.
“Got to shift, ’ave we, Sir? Then I suppose we’re going to have a war
too, aren’t we, Sir?”
“I should not be surprised,” I told him, and went below to superintend
the packing of my kit. It was no easy matter. Things accumulate in the
line; I always went up the line with a modestly filled pack, but by the
time I came down, it needed a mailbag to hold the books and magazines
that had gradually gathered round me, and after a fortnight in the same
dugout my kit was in no condition for emergency transportation.
My batman was examining it with a sorrowful face.
“You’ll ’ave to dump most of these books, Sir.”
“Oh, but surely we can get some of them down?”
“Then you’ll have to dump those boots, Sir, and that blanket. Can’t take
the lot, Sir.”
It was no use to argue with him. The batman’s orders are far more law
than a mandate from Brigade. The Brigadier is merely content to issue
orders; batmen see that theirs are carried out. There was nothing for it
but to dump the books, and I looked sadly at the considerable collection
that the mails of the last fourteen days had brought.
“Have they all got to go?”
“‘Fraid so, Sir.”
“What, all my pretty chickens, at one fell swoop?”
Private Warren eyed me stolidly.
“Well, Sir, I might manage two, Sir, but no more.”
I ran a pathetic eye over them. There were several I particularly wanted
to save; there were two novels by Hardy, Robert Graves’s new book of
Poems, _Regiment of Women_, a battered copy of _La Terre_, _The Oxford
Book of Verse_, _The Stucco House_. After a moment’s hesitation, the
last two were saved for further odysseys; there was just room in a spare
pocket for _Fairies and Fusiliers_; the rest would have to stay to
welcome the Teuton.
At last all the equipment of a machine-gun section had been carted away.
I took one turn round the dugouts to see that no incriminating document
remained. The dugout looked hospitably clean; all the delicacies of
handing over had been observed, but as there would be up one to receive
the relieving party, manners demanded some sort of “Salve”; and so,
tearing from a notebook a sheet of paper, I scrawled across it in large
letters, CHEERIOH, and pinned it over the entrance of my deserted home.
§ 2
_March 28th, 1918._
Of course the limbers never turned up. For two months without the least
inconvenience from German artillery they had come up to the ration dump
every night, but on this particular night they felt sure it would arouse
suspicions, and so a guide was sent instead. And in France there are
only two sorts of guides. There is the guide who does not know the way
and owns up to it, and there is the guide who does not know the way and
pretends he does. There are no others. Luckily ours came under the
former category.
“You see, Sir, I’ve only bin from Headquarters once and that was by day,
and I’m not too sure of the way.... I’ve only been ’ere once and
that....”
Which was a pretty clear sign that a compass bearing would be hardly
less reliable. We dumped most of our spare kit in the river, and set
off. It is wonderful how disorderly any movement of troops appears by
night. Actually it was a most methodical withdrawal, but in its progress
it looked pitifully like a rout. The road seemed littered with cast-off
equipment, ammunition, packs and bombs; dumps were going up all round.
Innumerable Highlanders had lost their companies; nobody seemed to know
where he was going or to care particularly whether he ever arrived. A
subsection of fifteen men straggled into an echelon formation covering
as many yards. It appeared an absolute certainty that dawn and the
Germans would find us still trailing helplessly along the road.
At last, however, came the loved jingle of harness, and the sound of
restive mules. We heaved packs and baggages on a limber, and more
cheerfully resumed our odyssey.
This cheerfulness considerably diminished when the section found that
our new positions were two hundred yards from the road, and that a
hundred boxes of S.A.A. had to be stacked in half an hour. But
eventually peace was restored to Israel, and by the time that the
morning broke, the section was fairly comfortably lodged in some disused
German dugouts.
There followed four very lazy days. The two subsections had been
amalgamated, and with my section officer Evans, I spent most of the day
working out elaborate barrage charts in case of a break through. Evans
had recently been on a course at Camières where they had given him an
enormous blue sheet which was warranted proof against geography. Evans
regarded it as a sort of charm.
“You see, with this,” he said, “you can get on to any target you like
within thirty seconds.”
And it was certainly an ingenious toy, but as far as we were concerned,
it did not accelerate the conclusion of the war. It required a level
table, numerous drawing-pins, carbon papers, faultless draughtsmanship
and much else with which we were unequipped: finally, when occasion
demanded we resorted to the obsolete method of aiming at the required
target.
Of the actual war little information was gleaned. The limber corporal
brought each evening the account of wondrous sallies and excursions.
Lens was purported to have fallen, and an enveloping attack was in
progress further North. Lille was only a matter of days. And then on the
night of the 27th there arrived the mail and papers of the preceding
seven days. It came in an enormous burst of epistolary shrapnel.
Personally I received thirty letters and five parcels. We sat up reading
them till midnight, and then in a contented frame of mind we turned to
the papers. It was a bit of a shock. We had hardly imagined that there
was a war on any front except our own. We had expected to see headlines
talking of nothing but the Fall of Bullecourt and our masterly
evacuation of Monchy. We had expected to see our exploits extolled by
Philip Gibbs; instead of that they filled a very insignificant corner.
It was all Bapaume, Ham, Peronne. We were merely a false splash of a
wave that already had gone home. It was a blow to our self-respect.
There was also no news of any enveloping manœuvres round Lille. The
Germans appeared to be doing all that.
Evans looked across at me dolefully.
“Do you think the men had better know anything about that?” he said.
“Shouldn’t think so. By the way, when are we being relieved?”
“The sooner the better. There is going to be a war on soon.”
And the memory of the thirty letters and five parcels thinned.
“Oh, well,” I said, “I’m going to bed.”
* * * * *
My sleep did not last long. Within an hour Evans was shouting in my ear.
“Hell of a strafe upstairs. I think they’re coming over.”
And indeed there was a strafe. Verey lights were going up all along the
front. Three dumps were hit in as many minutes, from the right came the
continual crump of “minnies.” Luckily we were in the shelter between the
barrage on the eighteen-pounders and the barrage on the front lines.
The only shells that came disconcertingly close were those from one of
our own heavies that was dropping short, like a man out of breath.
At seven o’clock the Germans came over, and by twelve we were being
escorted to Berlin.
Our actual engagement resembles so closely that of every other
unfortunate during those sorry days that it deserves no detailed
description. The only original incident came at about nine o’clock when
I discovered the perfidy of the section cook. I had sent him down to
fetch some breakfast, and he returned smoking triumphantly a gold-tipped
cigarette that he could have obtained from only one source. Perhaps this
is what those mean who maintain that in the moment of action one sees
the naked truth of the human soul. At any rate it stripped Private
Hawkins pretty effectively. No doubt this kleptomania had been a
practice with him for a long time, and at this critical moment I suppose
he saw no reason why he should conceal it: “much is forgiven to a man
condemned.” He literally flaunted theft.
[Illustration: “AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THE GERMANS CAME OVER.”
[_To face page 16._
]
“Hawkins,” I said quietly, “you’ll go back to the gun-team to-morrow.
We’ll find another cook.”
“Very good, Sir.”
And almost instantly the order was given a divine confirmation in the
form of the cushiest of flesh wounds in Private Hawkins’s right arm.
After a second’s gasp he bounded down the trench.
“A blighty, Sir,” he cried, “a blighty. No, Sir, don’t want to be bound
up or anything. They’ll do that at the dressing station. I’m orf.”
Visions had risen before him of white sheets and whiter nurses. He saw
himself being petted and made much of, the hero of the village; and as
the Germans slowly filtered round the flank, Private Hawkins rushed down
the communication trench, resolved to put at all cost the dressing
station between them and him. He succeeded. Probably it was the one time
he had ever tried to do anything in his life.