It is a wet winter morning at about 6.30. The huts are deserted. The
men, led by the sergeants of their companies, have gone to the kitchens
and await the distribution of their “half-pints.”
Carrying a bucket from which rises a thin column of steam, two prisoners
come back from the boilers. Their appearance is signalled to the
impatient crowd. At last!
The black drink for which the prisoners long is called coffee, an
hygienic beverage made of an infusion of roasted barley. It is drunk
without sugar and constitutes the whole of the meal, “Frühstuck”
(breakfast). It is with the utmost trouble that the N.C.O’s can keep in
their places these frozen, impatient men. The distribution begins. Each
man passes between two sergeants, who count and recognise those in their
company. The ration is exactly measured, and the intrusion of soldiers
belonging to another company, or an attempt to secure a second portion
by those who are not satisfied, is frustrated. It is not that the
beverage is agreeable to the taste or that those who take it are
greedy, but it has the advantage of being boiling, and the heat it
communicates lessens the early morning cold and relieves the parched
throats. Few of the prisoners possess a drinking vessel. Some by ruse
have succeeded in keeping the bowl in which the evening before they
received their soup. Two hundred and fifty men are present, some with a
half-pint measure, others with a bowl; one has a preserved meat tin,
another a jam jar; these receptacles are exchanged and pass from hand to
hand. Two hundred and fifty times the distributing sergeant has plunged
his measure into the bucket, which now seems empty. Disappointment
appears on the faces of those who hope to obtain an extra drop. Thus
ends the first meal!
Now we must parade for the roll-call. Under a fine and penetrating rain,
which soaks and makes us shiver from head to foot, with a cutting wind
entering through the holes of our ragged clothing with a keenness which
makes our eyes water, the assembly takes place.
The companies are deployed in lines of five rows, each before its hut.
Everybody, even the sick, must be present.
It is now scarcely seven o’clock. The French sergeant on duty counts his
men; the head of the company, an adjutant, does the same; then an
“Achtung” resounds in the greyness of the morning--it is a German
non-commissioned officer, come to verify the numbers. They are not
right; each counts again. But they never agree. They count, they verify
line by line, they recount, all to no purpose. Some men are missing. It
is never-ending! Quick! At the suggestion of a German, they borrow from
a company on the left the number of men necessary to complete the
effective force. It is the only way to shorten the ceremony.
At last “Es stimmt.” All present. The Boche is pleased with himself. The
French always make mistakes. He alone knows how to count. “Ruhe euch!”
(At ease). While the German authority turns his back the men from the
left run back to their own company.
This trick is played every day and as often as there is roll-call. One
must not indeed try to reason, to show that the number given by the
officer is not exact. The idea of criticising the orders and the numbers
of the higher command has never entered, or ever will enter the skull of
a German. Even if he does not understand them, he still will use his
efforts to make the given orders respected. Even if he is willing to
listen to you, if he knows how to reason, if he follows your argument
and agrees with your opinion, he will none the less remain obstinately
true to the error; for it is not his, it comes from his superiors, and
the fact of its coming from a superior makes it no longer an error; it
is the Truth, that one must accept and cause to be respected. So there
is nothing to be done! The company counts as its effective force two
hundred and fifty men; it is put on paper and the head of the Boches’
company believes he sees the full number in the ranks; they are his
“Stück,” they have been confided to him, he wishes to have them
numbered, before accounting for them as “alles da”!
The men stand at ease, but the inspection is not yet finished. The
French stamp their feet in mud indescribable; each moment becomes more
liquid as the stamping and the falling rain continue. The unfortunate
men who have colds, cough enough to make one’s heart break. Those who
are ill, those who are wounded, even those who have lost limbs, are kept
there standing in the pouring rain. What for? The orders for fatigue
duty for the day. At last these arrive.
At the approach of an officer every one immediately gets back to his
place and stands at attention.
An interpreter accompanies the officer and transmits his orders to the
chief of the company. The number of men to be furnished by each company
is fixed. The turns of fatigue duty are decided beforehand, and the
prisoners, called by name, go in fours, and form column at some distance
from the parade ground, where they are immediately surrounded by Boche
sentinels.
Thus the general fatigue work is arranged. The men are then counted.
This done, the sentinels bestir themselves and raise their hoarse
voices, crying, “Pâquâtrre” (Par quatre). At last the men start off at
the command “Los-march!” (March). Slowly the long line, flanked by
Boches in yellow cloaks, makes its way towards the exit of the camp.
Then, and then only, may the invalids, the men exempted from service and
those who are free, break ranks and seek shelter in the huts. There
they shiver in the dripping garments that they cannot dry, as they have
no others to change into.
* * * * *
In the mud through which they paddle and with which at every step they
are splashed, our prisoners continue their route. From time to time one
or other is obliged to stop and draw out a sabot from the cold, black
mud.
Poor compatriots, sad survivors of a glorious army. Look at them
marching with bent heads through the soaking rain. Most of them have
tied rags round their necks to protect them from the drops that fall
from their caps. A few--and these are indeed happy--have succeeded in
keeping their military clothes in fairly good state. Their great
overcoats can still protect them. Many are dressed in gay-coloured
Belgian coats, reminding one of the Opéra-Comique--short jackets which
come a little below the waist. A few of the more privileged have
received from the German administration civilian overcoats of a very
inferior quality, ornamented the length of the back with a green and
yellow or red and green band, to distinguish the interned from the
civilians, and to betray them in case of escape. The knitted helmets,
due to the generosity of a Swiss society, are worn by many to replace
the ordinary cap. The trousers are generally the worst part of the
outfit. If certain kinds of patching show ingenuity, at the same time
they reduce the material. One man has cut off the end of his trousers to
mend a weak place in another part, another has put on a patch with a
piece of linen. You might fancy you were in “la cour des miracles.”
Shoes are rare; sabots, granted by the Germans only to those capable of
working, are the kind of footwear that one sees the most. A few wear
khaki puttees bought for a few sous from a poor Englishman. Others have
pieces of linen or rags, which indifferently protect the calves of their
wearers, obliged to remain long hours exposed to the rigours of the
weather.
Until fatigue duty is over--that is to say, till about four o’clock--the
men will work out of doors without stopping, and till their return to
camp an hour later they will only have had for food the single drink of
coffee taken at réveillé. Thus these unfortunates remain from six
o’clock the evening before till five o’clock the next day without a bite
of solid food--twenty-three hours at a stretch without eating. On their
return to camp they swallow, one after the other, at an hour’s interval,
the broth of midday and the evening soup.
This diet, is it not enough to ruin the strongest digestion!
Often blinded by the icy rain, which cuts their faces, the workers go
away slowly like a troop of sheep led to the slaughter. They are silent.
As for the Huns, they don’t say a word. With long green porcelain pipes
between their lips, their heads covered by their cloaks, they only think
of one thing, and that is to protect their rifles, hidden under their
mackintoshes, from rust. The heavy silence is, however, troubled, as
with a sort of moan; it is the rubbing together of soaked trousers, it
is the sound of the sabots splashing through the puddles. From time to
time a man plunges to his ankles in a rut, or a hole full of water, and
lets forth an oath, which finds no echo. Every man remains isolated,
lives within himself. No one wishes to confide his sadness, his
weariness, his despair to a neighbour. Amongst these men who pass like a
procession of ghosts is there one who feels assured about the fate of
his family, is there one who does not curse his enforced separation from
those he loves, or one who can satisfy his hunger every day, and
preserve intact his constancy and strength of mind amid such adversity?
Who, even among the most debased, has been able to become used to this
brutalising life? Who has not suffered in his self-respect, or has
not--for a moment at least--felt degraded, when he has seen himself,
with his companions, herded like cattle, put in a cage like a wild beast
and fed worse even than they? Who of them will ever speak of the
physical, and above all the mental, sufferings of our prisoners, their
bitter reflections, their blasphemies, their deep despair, their hatred
of life? On their return to France they will wish to get rid of such
remembrances, as one washes oneself from a stain.
Thus they go on, their heads bent, their hearts full of bitterness.
Suddenly the first ranks stop short, and the rear not being warned are
thrown against them. The guards have made a sign. The four kilometres to
the destination are covered.
The fatigue party, consisting of from seven hundred to eight hundred
men, has to level a vast space of sandy soil. It is the site for a camp,
the plans of which are already drawn, to which the new recruits of the
next class will come to be mobilised.
They will be better off than in barracks. The position--an immense
clearing in the centre of a pine-forest--is healthy. Nothing will be
wanting: there is abundance of water, electric light will be installed,
large windows will give light and air to the huts, the roofs will be
thick and the walls made of bricks lined with wood.
Later, when the camp is on the point of being finished, the General who
commands the district will let neutral notabilities and journalists
visit it, and will present it to them as the future residence of those
poor French prisoners over which Germany watches with a mother’s love.
And these notabilities and these reporters, who in a motor have covered
the distance so painfully trodden by our compatriots, who have visited
the camp where one finds every modern comfort, will go back befooled by
the obsequious Germans, and in good faith will relate to their
countrymen how royally the French prisoners are treated in Germany.
The prisoners stop for several minutes motionless in the rain which a
bitter east wind brings; the men scarcely warmed by the march, freeze
again, for in the limits permitted to them there is no shelter, and it
is impossible to sit on the muddy ground.
At the signal to begin work, the men, with an aspect of indifference, go
towards an improvised shed, where the tools are kept during the night.
Nonchalantly each takes any tool that happens to come his way--one a
spade, another a pickaxe, another a wheelbarrow. The guards form a
circle around the workers and the long task begins.
For several days already they have been busy filling a vast depression,
and the hundreds of barrow-loads thrown in daily seem not to have made
any difference. It is a painful task to push over this sodden land,
where the mud sticks to the wheels, these barrows laden with sand.
But who is then this man, this Zouave, who, indifferent to the trouble
that his companions are giving themselves with pickaxe and spade, stands
motionless and idle in the midst of this activity? Leaning on the handle
of a spade fixed in the earth, he seems to be lost in a dream. Half an
hour has already passed and he has not yet touched the sand. The German
guards have noticed him and his idleness. His inaction puzzles them; it
must be put a stop to. A sentinel approaches and by a gesture makes the
soldier understand that he must work.
Impassive, the Frenchman replies by a shake of the head, and shows by a
shrug of his shoulders that it is not possible. The Boches think the
moment has come to interfere and to support their comrade; two or three
others go towards the Zouave. In a raised voice and with fiercer words
the sentinel repeats his demand. He grows angry, and it may be a bad
business for the Frenchman. But the threats do not terrify him. The
spade on which he was leaning falls to the ground, and with his left
hand taking his right from under his short Zouave coat he shows it to
the Boches who stand round him, lifeless, numbed, purple from cold and
the want of circulation. The guard regrets his harshness, and would
willingly make excuses, if he could make himself understood. The sight
of the wounded man fills him with pity. He gives forth a few “Achs,”
followed by “traurig,” makes a sign to the Zouave that he can rest, and
returns to his post of observation.
The Zouave is pleased to have puzzled the Boche; it is a game he loves
to indulge in. He is indeed one of those usually on fatigue duty, in
spite of the rule that forbids the wounded to be sent to work. But if
this invalid daily braves the fatigue of a painful march, of a long wait
on open land exposed to the inclemency of the weather, if he is willing
to suffer from the wind and the rain, it is because this wearisome day
assures him his daily bread. He answers to the name of one of his
comrades chosen to go on fatigue, in order to receive the sum of
threepence. With this money he buys a ration of bread from a needy
Englishman, who can go without food more easily than without tobacco. To
such extremities is this unhappy lad, just out of hospital, reduced. He
braves a march of eight kilometres and a wait of ten hours in an icy
downpour which brings on him a fever, to have 300 grammes--scarcely a
slice of K. bread, which is black, indigestible and made of bran, starch
of potatoes and sawdust.
* * * * *
Amongst the workers who labour without ceasing, a skilled eye quickly
detects those who in civil life are not used to this kind of work. They
are awkward, their tools seem too heavy for them.
Here, for example, is a young man, a budding soldier, who pants and
perspires while pushing before him a heavily-loaded barrow, the wheel of
which grates at each turn. The vehicle never will go straight, in spite
of the despairing efforts of its wheeler, who, however, works with as
much care as if the salvation of his country and his own deliverance
depended on the safe arrival of the load. He is a little man, puny, with
a humble, frightened air and a reserved manner, but his eyes have the
sharpness and the malice of a monkey. He goes on, absorbed in his work,
without deigning to notice those who surround him, whether allies or
enemies. You would swear that all his faculties are concentrated on the
work that he is doing. It is strange; for, after all, what interest can
a prisoner have in working for the Huns with so much energy and
conscientiousness? One feels that he wishes to remain unnoticed, but his
want of skill and his ardour call attention to him. Painfully, after
numerous prolonged stops, he gains the planks, where at last the
wheelbarrow can roll freely; he will wheel it to the side of a hole.
There he will empty his load. Then back again slowly, as much
embarrassed, it seems, by his empty wheelbarrow as he was when it was
full. After several journeys he gains sufficient skill to pass unnoticed
amongst the workers. He is a little Parisian of the class 1913. A
typewriter in an office before doing his service, he had never in his
[Illustration: _Page 106._]
life come into such close contact with a wheelbarrow. In the camp he has
the reputation of being gay, careless, full of spirits. He is a wag who
brings a smile on faces that are aged and tortured by suffering. But
there, on fatigue, he has an air of not knowing any one and only being
interested in his work.
But look! There he is coming back with his hands empty. Some kind and
charitable companion has undertaken to bring back his wheelbarrow.
Many times in the course of the day he is seen to come back with arms
idle and his expression pensive. No one pays attention to him.
But, sentinels, you make a mistake in trusting this young man as you do.
With all his simple looks he is playing tricks on the German Empire, the
all-powerful Kaiser and the fierce black eagle; tricks worthy of being
hanged for! This is his stratagem. To the extreme edge of the platform
that hangs over the hole he pushes his wheelbarrow, makes sure that he
is not observed by any one, and bang!--in a moment, with a skill that
one would not have expected from a person so puny and awkward, he hurls
into space barrow and all!
Three times, four times, five times, as opportunities occur, he repeats
this little game, and then goes off slowly, with the assured step of a
good workman at peace with his conscience, to seek another wheelbarrow
in the shed, which will soon meet the fate of its predecessors. Thanks
to him the number of barrows diminishes rapidly. One day an inventory
will show the disappearance of twenty or thirty of them. Where can they
be? They are marked with the imperial arms and cannot have been stolen!
Puzzle!
It is a devil’s trick that no one can explain. A stricter watch reveals
nothing. The land has indeed been levelled for several days, and the
sheds are already covering that cemetery of wheelbarrows.
I know, however, a certain delicate-looking Frenchman, of innocent
aspect, who could teach much to the officer of many stars in charge of
the supplies. Let the Boche rack his brains, let him be plunged in
despair--the Frenchman will not speak and the authorities will only lose
their time.
In the evening, on returning from work, our wag will say to himself,
rubbing his hands with the satisfaction which is the right of a
conscientious worker, “To-day I have given five wheelbarrows to France”;
for it is quite just to say that what one has taken from Germany has
been given to France.
In some thousands of years, excavations, undertaken by these horribly
learned, spectacled Boches, will bring to light in a good state of
preservation the frames of the wheelbarrows that a French prisoner made
such good use of. The learned doctor, excited by such a find, will dress
up in a Latin name these rediscovered objects, and, writing in that
language a long and learned treatise, will prove that the wheelbarrow
existed at the time of Cicero, and with fierce invective will denounce
the Frenchman Pascal, who claimed the invention of this means of
transport. He will make a gift of the least beautiful specimens to the
museum of the province, and will send the rest to the Imperial Museum at
Berlin, in recompense for which the eminent doctor will be admitted to
the Boche Institute and be profoundly reverenced--unless between now and
then the name of Germany will have taken its place in legend beside
those of Troy and Carthage!
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE COMPANY COMMANDER]