It was right at the beginning of hostilities. The prisoners had been
sent to an instruction camp, the buildings of which were still occupied
by German recruits.
The men, guarded by sentinels, were at that time herded together on some
waste land surrounded by barbed wire; shelter there was none. We dug
ourselves holes in the sand as best we could. Some green branches formed
a roof; and there, exposed to the rain, we remained night and day, even
without straw to lie on or coverings to protect us from the severity of
the nights, which were already very cold. The wounded were visited from
time to time by a German army doctor; there being no hospital, they
suffered still more from the exposure than their comrades did.
Twice a day, at a fixed hour, officers and men filed before the doors of
the kitchens. For some time even a French General was to be seen,
joining this long line of starving people. He had come to receive with
his own hands the bowl that the German cooks refused to give to any but
himself. However, a room had been prepared for him in some neighbouring
barracks.
The men slept in the open. The tents were not put up till much later;
but at the end of a fortnight or three weeks, after an American official
had visited the camp, they consented to house the prisoners in stables,
considered too unhealthy for horses! Our soldiers were frequently twelve
in a box. The Germans, who seem able to foresee everything, did not
attach sufficient importance to the question of prisoners, or perhaps
imagined these arrangements would do well enough for the two months the
war was to last.
Now there came a day when the German General, who commanded the camp,
arrived to visit the first prisoners. Of a height above the average,
broad-shouldered and upright, he must have been in his time a fine man,
one to command the respect of his men. His head was bent with age and he
kept it sunk between his shoulders like a wrestler. His light blue eyes,
which must have been piercing when he was younger, had become dulled,
but they were still penetrating enough and showed that the years had not
weakened his will when occasionally they shone suspicious and hard from
under his bushy brows. A thick grey moustache hid his lips. On his left
cheek was a deep scar, made, I was told, by a French bullet in 1870. His
bearing was noble, his step slow and dignified. He went about, whip in
hand, followed by two bloodhounds that kept close to his heels.
The General had for the French a fierce hatred, which he showed whenever
an occasion arose. Perhaps he had suffered in the campaign of ’70, and
his wound had soured him; perhaps also his education, directed by those
above him, had taught him to detest our race. As he was too old for
active service he was given the organisation and direction of a
concentration camp.
Our soldiers, a few from all classes, but mostly from the territorials,
were drawn up in two lines by German non-commissioned officers. An
interpreter translated to them the orders and commands of a fierce
German officer. The clinking together of a sentinel’s heels getting into
position announced the arrival of the superior officer. A thundered
“Achtung!” pealed forth and the General reviewed our soldiers, who were
standing at attention. “Frenchmen,” he said, fiercely pulling his
moustache, “forty years ago your fathers came here; you are here now,
and your sons will come in another forty years! It is good for the
French nation to come from time to time and spend a period in Germany.
But, after all, you won’t be here for many months: our armies are at
Paris, and the war is coming to an end. It was you who declared war; you
will repent it. That’s all!” And as the simple wave of his hand was not
sufficient to make the assembled prisoners disappear from his sight, he
turned round and rode away.
Could one possibly speak more wickedly? What pleasure could this officer
find in making
[Illustration: _Page 38._]
our prisoners sadder? Was not their state already bad enough to make it
necessary for this old man, with his irony and lies, to come and sow
discouragement in the hearts of the fighters of yesterday?
But he was carrying out an order--instructions from headquarters--to
demoralise those in Germany for whom the fight was over; they must
destroy their vitality, their constancy in trial, their living hope, the
confidence in victory which is the glory of the French. And our jailers
would have been happy if they could have demoralised us, if they could
have made us apathetic blocks without moral pluck; so they tried by
every means to make our captivity as painful as possible. But those
pinpricks, those numberless petty vexations, the false reports put up
each day in the camp, could not attain the success on which our jailers
counted. The being forbidden to smoke, the punishment of being bound to
posts, the long waits standing motionless in the rain, the privations of
all sorts, the propagation of news of disaster to our side, and our
miserable condition: none of these could touch our spirit. The Frenchman
has this to the good, that he keeps a certain youthfulness of character.
A trifle may amuse him, because he knows that a comic element, that a
grain of folly and gaiety is found in every human creature and in every
situation. He is constantly on the watch for this comic element, and is
past-master in the art of discovering it. It is, so it seems to him,
when he is the most wretched, the most exposed to emergencies, that his
eye becomes more acute, so that he seizes still more willingly on the
gay and light note which keeps him atune with laughter.
So it was that the General who understood us not at all was offended by
the mood that he judged provocative, and, unwilling to be worsted, he
decided to put an end to it.
The prisoners were reassembled. An hour’s waiting in the rain did not
succeed in making them look sullen. Already jokes and speculation ran
riot: “The war is finished”; “We are going to be sent back to France”;
“There is to be an exchange of prisoners”; “Germany is dying of hunger,
and Switzerland has consented to feed us.” Some, less respectful,
suggested that the General was going to hold a foot review.
At last that important personage appeared, and his entrance on the scene
cut short our speeches. He addressed the men who were drawn up in a
circle round his white horse. “Messieurs,” he said, “going through the
camp I noticed that you amuse yourselves, that you laugh, that you are
gay. You ought to remember that you are prisoners. You ought to be sad.
’Tention! Be sad!” Having spoken, he wheeled his horse about.
The success of such a speech was instantaneous. A few of our prisoners
were thunderstruck; others with difficulty hid their smiles, through
fear of what might happen, while the rest could not contain themselves,
but frankly burst out laughing.
A new German defeat was thus registered. From that day the mention of
the simple expression: “Be sad!” was sufficient to dissipate the “blues”
and transform a face of sadness into one of mirth.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: SALOUTEZ!]