NEW ARRIVALS
On March 6th a new prisoner arrived, an Englishman who had been taken in
the fighting on the Congo border. When war broke out he was working in
the Congo, and had promptly offered his services to the Belgians. When
captured he was not in uniform, and consequently he was for a long time
regarded by the Germans with grave suspicion; in fact, it was a question
whether he should not be shot as a _franc tireur_. However, this did
not seem to trouble him much, and in the end his explanation that he
had been out shooting game and plunged straightway into the fighting on
his return to camp, was accepted. He was a most extraordinary chap—a
real adventurer. He gave us some wonderful accounts of all that had been
happening in the outside world, and at first his confirmed optimism did
much to raise our flagging spirits; but at last he rather over-reached
himself, and we began to question his veracity. In the end I fear we
discredited almost everything he told us, and he became known as “Baron
Munchausen,” or “the Baron,” for short. He interested me a good deal, for
he was a regular rolling stone, and seemed to have knocked about all over
the world—the type of man who always manages just to make a living but
is incapable of steady work or sustained effort. At one moment he would
be rioting with pockets full of gold, but this being speedily dissipated,
in a few weeks he would again be penniless and begging for any job he
could get. As to his family, they had either disowned him or he had
disowned them, for apparently he had not heard of or from them for years,
and his home was just the place where he happened to be for the moment.
I had many yarns with him, and found that he knew Shanghai better than I
did myself.
* * * * *
Del Luigi is another of our number who stands out in my memory by reason
of his originality. An Italian living in Nairobi, he had joined the
British Force as a motor-mechanic in the early days of the war, and had
been ambushed on the British East Africa frontier. His account of the
struggle the Askaris had with his motor-bike was very amusing. It would
seem that the German in charge of the patrol which had captured him knew
nothing of motors, and he ordered his Askaris to wheel the machine into
camp. This they attempted, but the clutch being still in, they found the
job almost more than they could manage! In reply to impatient questions
Luigi said the cycle was always hard to push, and, with the most innocent
face imaginable, offered to ride it in! But the German was far too
cautious a bird to fall into that trap, and so the wretched Askaris,
grunting and sweating, had to practically carry the heavy machine the
whole way into camp!
Luigi had been one of the occupants of the Major’s room, and was
consequently under suspicion. On March 18th he was seen waving to the
captive and shouting a few words of encouragement. For this heinous
crime he was promptly put under arrest, and after a brief trial in the
office, condemned to three days’ confinement on a diet of bread and
water. Shortly after he had been locked in his cell he set up the most
awful row, kicking at the door as if he would break it down. Müller,
one of the guards, went to investigate, and anticipating some fun, we
all hung out of our windows to listen. The only language common to them
both was Kiswahili, and in this they conversed. Luigi began mildly
enough, but as the tale of his complaints went on, his voice rose in
gradually-increasing crescendo until he was shouting at the full pitch of
his lungs: “_Hapana chakula! Hapana kitanda! Hapana kiti! Hapana maji!
Hapana kitu! Shenzi! Nom de Dieu!_”
Now, this being interpreted, means, “No food, no bed, no chair, no water.
Nothing!” _Shenzi_—uncultivated boor—a term of opprobrium or insult much
in use among the natives.
Müller, red in the face, retired beaten by this torrent of invective!
Luigi got his bed, a mug of water, and the rest. But he also got his
sentence extended to a week!
For some time after the Major’s attempted escape all the prisoners
were confined to the Boma, and were not allowed outside its precincts
even under guard. We (the officers) were especially annoyed by this
restriction, for, having given our parole not to attempt to escape, we
expected, and were entitled to a certain amount of liberty: the said
parole laid us under greater penalties in the event of its being broken
than applied to those who had not pledged their word. So I wrote to the
Governor, pointing out that since we had been in no way implicated in the
Major’s bid for liberty, we were undoubtedly entitled to preferential
treatment, for if the Germans would not trust us they should not have
asked for or accepted our parole, but simply have put us on the same
footing as ordinary prisoners.
After a short interval an order came through that we should be allowed to
resume our walks, and thus on Easter Sunday we recovered our comparative
liberty.
It was indeed a treat to get outside that Boma again, and I marvelled at
the transformation the rains had worked in the surrounding country. The
plateau was knee-deep in grasses and herbs, and the slope of the hill
down to the plain was almost unrecognisable. All the trees and bushes
were in full leaf, and where previously there had been only bare brown
earth now stretched a thick carpet of flowering plants. I wished that my
knowledge of botany was more extensive, for I came across several, to
me, botanical curiosities. The air was alive with butterflies of every
shape and colour, and I straightway became an amateur entomologist, made
a net, and started collecting, although I could not name the specimens I
caught. However, all that were perfect I preserved, and stored them away
in a tin with some naphthaline which I was lucky enough to find in the
dispensary, and I continued to add to my collection at intervals during
the rest of my imprisonment.
That spring there were many cases of malaria among us—which goes to prove
that Kilimatinde is not free from the fever-bearing Anopheles, although
the insects are not numerous. Culicinæ, on the other hand, swarmed after
the rains, and became such a pest that in the evenings we were driven to
wrap our legs in rugs as a protection from their attack. These mosquitoes
were quite able to bite through one’s socks, but it usually defeated them
if two pairs were worn. We were all provided with mosquito-curtains, but
notwithstanding that precaution we all managed to get infected. I had
my first attack in April. The experience might have been a valuable one
for a medical man, for I had many cases to treat, but since I had no
microscope and could not succeed in obtaining one, my diagnosis had to be
made clinically, and thus I was robbed of a very favourable opportunity
for a little study and research. However, I made full use of the licence
allowed me in visiting the native dispensary, and here made friends
with the native hospital attendant—Saidi by name, to whom was entrusted
the care of the Askaris and the native population. He was a fairly
intelligent specimen of his race, and quite capable of treating ordinary
cases of fever, etc.
The stock of quinine in the Colony was very small, but the Germans
proved themselves good chemists in that they started the manufacture of
the drug. The Chinchona tree is not indigenous to Africa, but before
the war some specimens had been planted at an experimental plantation
somewhere in the Colony—I think it was at a place called Amani—and when
the reserves of the European article began to run out they started
stripping the bark off these trees and extracting the alkaloid, from
which they eventually made tablets, and I was given some for the use of
my patients. They were much larger than those to which we are accustomed,
and as they were less highly concentrated it was necessary to give a
bigger dose. These tablets were reserved for the use of the white men
only; the native patients were treated with a solution called Chinoidin,
in which the amount of active alkaloid was comparatively small.
* * * * *
As a result of the official investigation following on the Major’s
escapade, several drastic changes were made in the camp routine.
Prisoners were now required to attend a roll-call in the courtyard at
6.45 a.m. (before breakfast), only officers being exempted, and no one
was allowed out of their rooms after 7.30 p.m., at which hour all lights
were extinguished. At 8.30 p.m. the guard came on a round of inspection,
when we all had to be in our own rooms and standing by our beds. Further,
it was decided that the prisoners were too comfortable, so all the “boys”
were removed, with the exception only of two kept to wait upon officers,
and, of course, the cook-boys who worked for Frau Mahnke. Thenceforward
all prisoners had to make their own beds, clean their own rooms, fetch
their food from the kitchen, and wash up after meals.
Not even to the women or the missionaries was any consideration shown.
In a European country this would not have mattered very much, but in
Africa, where even the poorest white has one or two native servants, the
effect was to seriously lower British prestige and to give the natives
the impression that we were a conquered and inferior race, and this,
doubtless, is exactly what the Germans intended.
Frau Mahnke’s contract for feeding the prisoners was also altered, and
the food reduced both in quantity and variety. The new scale which
came into operation on May 1st, 1915, was as follows: for breakfast,
coffee and bread, with either a scrap of butter and one boiled egg, or
a portion of cold meat; for the midday meal, meat with boiled rice, or
dried beans, or potatoes—but the latter, which appeared only at rare
intervals, were boiled in their skins and consisted of the smallest of
the crop, such as at home are used for feeding pigs. The last and final
meal was at six in the evening, and consisted of bread with cold meat
or cheese, and either soup or coffee. We much preferred the coffee, for
the soup was like nothing in the world but dish-water! The meat, whether
hot or cold, was always boiled, and always tough, the latter being due
to the poor quality of the cattle, and the fact that the meat had to be
used on the day it was killed, as it would not keep. Hot or cold, it
was equally nasty, and our staple diet seemed to be boiled rice, which
came to table in a sodden mass, and only the pangs of hunger enabled us
to swallow it. We never had a rice-pudding, but when possible we used
to buy native sugar or wild honey to help the rice down. The beans,
which appeared almost as often, were a kind of haricot or dried bean,
and they were boiled until soft—or at least supposed to be soft. Many
people dislike them even more than the rice, but I preferred them, for in
my opinion they at least contained more nutriment. The butter was half
butter-milk; it was served only at breakfast, and then in such absurdly
small quantities that it was only by the greatest economy that we could
manage to save any for our tea or supper.
When the afternoon meal was suspended it became the general practice
to save some bread and butter to eat about 4 p.m., when the pangs of
hunger became insistent. The kitchen was locked after dinner was over,
but a fire was usually kept burning in another small kitchen beneath the
Kommandant’s quarters, and the members of each mess used to take it in
turns to go down there, make up the fire, and heat the coffee. But later,
for some reason which we never could fathom, this place was ordered to
be kept locked too, and so most of the prisoners had to drink their
coffee cold, and since we had no milk, and sugar was far too precious to
squander unnecessarily, it was but poor comfort.
Shortly before all these irritating restrictions came into force we
officers had been moved to a different part of the Boma, and we now
occupied a sort of small flat over the post-office. It comprised two
rooms, and was reached by an outside stair leading up to a small verandah
which faced east. When we were debarred from using the kitchens, T——
very cleverly contrived a small stove which we used in the inner room,
and whereon we managed to heat our coffee. It really answered very well,
the only drawback being that the room at times got uncomfortably full of
smoke, and as fires in the prisoners’ rooms were not allowed, we had to
be careful we were not spotted. One afternoon Müller unexpectedly came
running up our staircase, and we had just time to plunge the stove bodily
into a bucket of water, while one of us commenced to pull vigorously at
his pipe to account for the smoky atmosphere! It is a tribute to the
strength and aroma (?) of the native pat-tobacco that the guard noticed
nothing unusual!
* * * * *
On May 2nd the arrival in camp of the Italian Consul gave us our first
intimation that Italy had declared war.
In June there was great excitement, for we were informed that we might
send letters to our friends, but we were also warned that we must give no
news other than such as was purely personal, nor mention in what part of
the Colony we were interned.
That mail left Kilimatinde on June 4th, and it eventually reached its
destination.