PRISONERS
A German Version of a Soldier's Death!--The Courage of
Cox--Robbing the Helpless--Water on the End of a Bayonet--The
Curious Case of Scott--Prussian Bullies--Why I Was Covered with a
Fine Sweat.
The Germans were by this time in full possession of this slice of
trench, and for the next few minutes the officer was kept busy pulling
his men off their victims. Like slavering dogs they were.
He did not have his lambs any too well in hand, however. O.B. Taylor,
a lovable character in Number One Company, came to his end here. The
Germans ordered him and Hookie Walker to go back down the trench. He
had no sooner turned to do so than a German shot him from behind and
from quite close, so that it blew the groin completely out, making a
terrible hole. We could not tie up so bad a wound and he bled to
death. Hookie Walker remained with him to the last, five hours later,
when he said: "I'm going to sleep boys," and did so. Fortunately, he
did not suffer. And all the others except young Cox were equally
fortunate, since they were murdered outright.
Taylor's was the most calculated of all the murders we had witnessed
and outdid even those of the wounded because the excitement of the
fight was two hours old and he was doing the bidding of his captors at
the time. The killing of those who resisted was of course quite in
order. Why he was killed while Walker was left unharmed and at his
side to the last we did not know and could only credit to a whimsy of
our captors. No punishment was visited upon his murderer or upon any
of them so far as we were able to learn.
Upon my later return to Canada I found that Taylor's sister there had
received a letter from a German officer enclosing a letter addressed
to her which had been found on her brother's body, together with three
war medals and a Masonic ring. The latter was the key to the incident
since the officer also claimed to have been a Mason. In his letter
this officer said that her brother had met a soldier's death!
Some said that our friendly officer was not a German but an Irishman.
I doubted that but it may have been so, for it was true that his
speech contained no trace of the accent which is usually associated
with a German's English speech. His was that of an English gentleman.
And to him we undoubtedly owed our wretched lives that day.
I in particular have good cause to be grateful. A German, all of six
foot four, who swung a tremendously broad headsman's axe with a curved
blade, tried several times to get at me. Each time the officer stopped
him. Still he persisted. He apparently saw no one else and kept his
eye fastened on me with deadly intention in it. He pushed aside the
others, Prussians and prisoners alike; he whirled the shining blade
high above a face lit up with savage exultation, terrible to see, and
which reflected the sensual revelling of his heated brain in the
bloody orgy ahead. As I followed the incredibly rapid motions of the
blade, my blood turned to water. My limbs refused to act and my mind
travelled back over the years to a little Scottish village where I had
been used to sit in the dark corners of the shoemaker's shop,
listening to him and others of the old 2nd Gordons recount their
terrible tales of the hill men on the march to Kandahar with "Bobs."
And now I felt that same tremendous sensation of fear which used to
send me trembling to my childish pallet in the croft, peering
fearfully through the darkness for the oiled body of a naked Pathan
with his corkscrew kris. Terror swept over me like a springtime flood.
He saw no one else. His eye fastened on me in crudest hate. But as he
stood over me with feet spread wide and the circle of his axe's swing
broadening for the finale, the thread of rabbit-like mesmerism broke
and I sprang nimbly aside as the blade buried itself deep in the mud
wall I had been cowering against. I endeavoured to dodge him by
putting some of my fellow prisoners between us. No use. He followed
me, shoving and cursing his way among them, swinging his axe. My hair
stood on end and I felt rather critical of their much-vaunted Prussian
discipline. Another endeavoured to bayonet Charlie Scarfe. The officer
at last stopped them both.
Our captors belonged to the Twenty-first Prussian Regiment and were,
so far as we knew, the first of their kind we had been up against,
all previous comers on our front having been Bavarians and latterly
of the army group of Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria--"Rupie," we called
him. They wore the baggy grey clothes and clumsy looking leather top
boots of the German infantryman. The spiked _pickelhauben_ was
conspicuous by its absence and was, we well knew, a thing only of
billets and of "swank" parades. In its place was the soft pancake
trench cap with its small colored button in the front.
The enemy were armed for the most part with pioneers' bayonets, as
well adapted by reason of their saw edges for sticking flesh and blood
as for sawing wood; and, if for the former, an unnecessarily cruel
weapon, since it was bound to stick in the body and badly lacerate it
internally in the withdrawal; especially if given a twist.
The trench front had been about-faced since its change of ownership
and the Germans were already casting our dead out of the shattered
trench, both in front and behind, and in many cases using them to stop
the gaps in the parapet; so that they now received the bullets of
their erstwhile comrades.
We were ordered up and out at the back of the parapet and then made to
lie there. The German artillery had ceased. We had none. Odd shots
from the remnant of our fellows still hanging on in the supports
continued to come over, but none of us were hit. In all probability,
they withheld their fire when they saw what was afoot. Some German
snipers in a farmhouse at the rear were less considerate, but
fortunately failed to hit us.
Later we were ordered to take our equipment off and those who had
coats, to shed them. We did not see the latter again and missed them
horribly in the rain of that day. Two of the Prussians "frisked" us
for our tobacco, cigarettes, knives and other valuables.
This was in bitter contrast to our own treatment of prisoners under
similar conditions. True, we had always searched them but had
invariably returned those little trinkets and comforts which to a
soldier are so important. And I think our men had always showered them
with food and tobacco.
We were then marched to the rear, with the exception of one, who, by
permission of the officer, remained with the dying Taylor.
There were ten of us all told. I have only heard of a few others who
were captured that day. Roberts is still in Germany and Todeschi has
been exchanged and is now in Toronto. The latter lay with a boy of the
machine-gun crew for a couple of days in a dug-out, both badly
wounded. A German stumbled on to them. They pleaded for water. The
German said, "I'll give you water" and bayoneted the boy as he lay. He
raised his weapon so that the blood of his comrade dripped on
Todeschi's face.
"All right," Todeschi cried in German, "kill me too, but first give me
water, you----"
The German lowered his rifle in amazement: "What, you schwein, you
speak the good German? Where did you learn it?"
"In your schools. For Christ's sake--give me water--and kill me."
"What! You live with us and then do this? Schwein!"
"All right, I will give you water and I will not kill you; just to
show you how well we can treat a prisoner."
Todeschi was then taken to the field dressing station where according
to his own account his mangled leg was amputated without the use of
any anesthetic. But that may have been because in such a time of
stress they had none. Later he was exchanged.
I met Scott in the prison camp a few days later and he told his tale.
It appears that in the confusion of the earlier fighting he had become
separated from the regiment, became lost and eventually floundered
into an English battalion. He reported to the officer commanding the
trench and told his story. The officer had no idea where the Patricias
lay and so ordered Scott to remain with them until such time as an
inquiry might establish the whereabouts of his regiment.
They were captured, but under less exciting circumstances than
occurred in our own case. And the Germans had word that there was a
Canadian amongst these English troops. It was one of the first things
mentioned. They did not say how they had acquired their information,
but shouted out a request for the man to stand forth. When no one
complied, they questioned each man separately, asking him if he was a
Canadian or knew aught of one in that trench.
They all lied: "No." The Germans were so certain that they again went
over each man in turn, examining him.
Scott was at the end of the line. He began to cut the Canadian buttons
off his coat and to remove his badges. Several men near by assisted
and replaced them with such of their own as they could spare; each man
perhaps contributing a button. They had no thread nor time to use it
if they had, so tacked the buttons into place by all manner of
makeshifts, such as broken ends of matches thrust through holes
punched in the cloth; anything to hold the buttons in place and tide
the hunted Scott over the inspection. He passed. The Germans were
quite furious.
Scott and his companions could only guess at the cause of this strange
conduct, but presumed that the Canadian was wanted for special
treatment of an unfavorable, if not of a final nature.
To return to our own case:
About the middle of the afternoon we were herded by our guards into a
shallow depression a short distance in the rear of the trench and
there told to lie down. The officer and his men returned to the
trench. Until we were taken back to the trench at six we were
continually sniped at by the Germans in the captured trench. We had no
recourse but to make ourselves as small as possible, which we did. And
whether owing to the fact that the hollow we were lying in prevented
our being actually within the range of the enemy vision, or whether
they were merely playing cat and mouse with us, I do not know, but
none were hit. Young Cox suffered stoically. His mangled hand had
become badly fouled with dirt and filth, and the ragged bones
protruded through the broken flesh. So, in a quiet interval between
the sniping periods we hurriedly sawed the shattered stump of his hand
off with our clasp knives and bound it up as best we could. It was not
a nice task, for him nor us, but he did not so much as grunt during
the operation. The nearest he came to complaining was when he asked me
to let him lay his hand across my body to ease it, at the same time
remarking: "I guess when they get us to Germany they'll let us write,
and I'll be able to write mother and then she'll not know I've lost my
hand." He was a most valiant and faithful soldier.
The perpetual rain and mist peculiar to that low-lying land added to
our wretched condition and increased the pain of the wounds that most
of us suffered from.
At six o'clock our guards returned and curtly ordered us to our feet.
We were taken back to the trench, where our officer friend had us
searched again. Here for the first time my two corporal's stripes were
noticed and a mild excitement ensued. "Korporal! Korporal!" they
exclaimed and crowded up the better to inspect me and verify the
report, and jabbering "_Ja! Ja!_" Apparently a captured corporal was a
rarity. Strangely enough, they paid little or no attention to the
sergeant of our party, although he had the three stripes of his rank
up.
As I happened to be in the lead of our party and the first to enter
the trench, I was the first man searched and so had to await the
examination of the others. Worn out by the events of the day and the
wound I had received early in the morning from a shell fragment, I
fell asleep against the wall of the trench where I sat.
I was awakened by a poke in the ribs from Scarfe. "Time to shift,
mate."
I rose to my feet and, following the instructions of the officer, led
the way along the trench. The Germans had already, with their usual
industry, gotten the trench into some sort of shape again, with the
parapet shifted over to the other side and facing Belle-waarde Wood.
And everywhere along its length I noticed the bodies of our dead built
into it to replace sandbags while others lay on the parados at the
rear.
It was not nice. The faces of men we had known and had called comrade
looked at us now in ghastly disarray from odd sections of both walls.
Already they were taking a brick-like shape from the weight of the
filled bags on top of them. In places the legs and arms protruded,
brushing us as we passed. However, this was war and quite ethical.
Naturally we had to crowd by the other occupants of the trench. And
each took a poke at us as we went by, some with their bayonets,
saying: "Verdamnt Englaender" and: "Englaender Schwein,"--pigs of
English. Also quite a number of them spoke English after a fashion.
There was in these men none of the soldier's usual tolerance or
good-natured pity for an enemy who had fought well and had then
succumbed to the fortunes of war. Instead, a blind and vicious rage
which took no account of our helpless condition.
They cuffed us, they buffeted us, they pricked us cruelly with their
saw bayonets and then laughed and sneered as we flinched and dodged
awkwardly aside. Then they cursed us.
Shortly, we were led into the presence of a man whom I shall remember
if I live to be a hundred. He wore glasses and on his upper lip there
bloomed such a dainty moustache as is affected by "Little Willie" as
Tommy calls the German Crown Prince. He had the eye of a rat. It
snapped so cruel a hate that one's blood stopped.
He seized me by the right shoulder with his left hand: "You Corporal!
You Corporal!" as though that fact of itself condemned me, and at the
same time tugging at his holster until he found his revolver, which he
placed against my temple. Then and there I fervently prayed that he
would pull the trigger and end it all. I was fed up. The all-day
bombardment, the last terrible slaughter of helpless men, the rain and
cold, combining with the pain of the raw wound in my side, had gotten
on my nerves. With the revolver still at my head I turned to Scarfe:
"They're going to do us in, Charlie. I only hope they'll do it proper.
None of that bayonet stuff. Bullets for me." Already the Prussians
were crowding round us threateningly again, with their saw-edged
bayonets ready, some fixed in the rifle, others clasped short, like
daggers, for such a butchering as they had had earlier in the
afternoon, when I had been so nearly axed.
"Might as well kill us outright as scare us to death," complained
Scarfe bitterly.
Nevertheless our hearts leaped when a moment later our mysterious
black officer friend hove in sight. Life is sweet.
He asked them what they did with us. The tableau answered for itself
before the words had left his lips. And then we had to listen to our
fate discussed in language and gesture so eloquent and so fraught with
terrible importance to us that our sensitized minds could miss no
smallest point of each fine shade of cruel meaning.
"Little Willie" thought it scarce worth their while to bother with so
small a bag; that it would not be worth the trouble to send a
miserable ten of _Verdamnt Englaender_ back to the Fatherland--Better
to kill them like the swine they were.
Our blood froze to hear the man and to see the poison of that rat soul
of his exuding from his every pore, in every gesture and in each fresh
inflection of his rasping voice. And all his men shouted their fierce
approval and shook in our faces their bloody butcher's bayonets. It
was a bitter draught. If they had killed us then it would have had to
have been done in most cold blood, exceeding even the murder of Taylor
in planned brutality. He at least had not known that it was coming and
had not felt this insane fear which we now experienced and which made
us wonder how they would do it. Would each have to watch the other's
end? And would it be done by bullet or by bayonet? We greatly feared
it would be the latter. We pictured ourselves held down as hogs
are--our throats slit----!
The dark officer thought otherwise and minced no words in the saying.
Our hearts leapt out to him warmly, in gratitude.
He sharply ordered them to desist, at which they slunk sullenly away,
as hungry dogs do from a bone.
I felt an uncomfortable physical sensation and ran my hand uneasily
beneath my shirt. I was covered with a fine sweat.