HE GOES TO THE CIVILIAN CAMP AND DOESN'T LIKE IT
"'Ere we are in bloomin' old Slops! Not 'arf bad, wot? Another inch and
we'd bunk our noses plunk into Alsice! Wot d'ye s'y, Freddie?"
"I s'y it's the back o' the old front. The only thing in the w'y is the
mountains. Hi, Yankee! You see 'em? It's the ole mountains out of the
song."
Tom looked at a distant range of blue-gray heights. Crossing those
somewhere was the battle line--the long, sweeping line which began far
off at the Belgian coast. How lonesome and romantic it must be for the
soldiers up in those wild hills. Somewhere through there years ago
Frenchy had fled from German tyranny and pursuit, away from his beloved
ancestral home. Funny, thought Tom, that he should see both the eastern
and western extremities of France without ever crossing it.
He was much nearer the front than he had been when he talked with Mr.
Conne in the little French cemetery. Yet how much farther away! A
prisoner in Germany, with a glowering, sullen Prussian guard at his very
elbow!
"We used to sing about them when I went to school," he said. "'The Blue
Alsatian Mountains.'"
"I'd jolly well like to be on the other side o' them," said Freddie.
Tom clutched the little iron button in his pocket. Something prompted
him to pull a button off his trousers and to work his little talisman
into the torn place so that it would look like a suspender button. Then
he turned again to gaze at the fair country which he supposed to be one
of France's lost provinces--the home of Frenchy.
"There ain't much trouble crossing mountains," said he; "all you need is
a compass. I don't know if they have tree-toads here, but I could find
out which is north and south that way if they have."
"Blimy, if we don't listen and see if we can 'ear 'em s'ying 'polly voo
Fransay' in the trees!" said Tennert.
"But a feller could never get into France that way," said Tom. "'Cause
he'd have to cross the battle line. The only way would be to go down
around through Switzerland--around the end of the line, kind of."
"Down through Alsice," grunted Tennert.
"'E'd 'ave a 'underd miles of it," said Freddie.
"Unless Fritzie offered 'im a carriage. Hi, Fritzie, w'en do we have
tea?"
They made no secret of this dangerous topic--perhaps because they knew
the idea of escape from the clutches of Germany was so preposterous. In
any event, "Fritzie" did not seem greatly interested.
They were grouped at the station, a woebegone looking lot, despite their
blithe demeanor. There were a dozen or more of them, in every variety of
military and naval rags and tatters. Tom was coatless and the rest of
his clothing was very much the worse for salt water. The sailor suits of
his two companions were faded and torn, and Freddie suffered the
handicap of a lost shoe. The rest were all young. Tom thought they might
be drummer boys or despatch riders, or something like that. Several of
them were slightly wounded, but none seriously, for Germany does not
bother with prisoners who require much care. They were the residue of
many who had come and gone in that long monotonous trip. Some had been
taken off for the big camps at Wittenberg and Goettingen. As well as he
could judge, he had to thank his non-combatant character as well as his
youth for the advantages of "Slopsgotten."
When the hapless prisoners had been examined and searched and relieved
of their few possessions, they were marched to the neighboring camp--a
civilian camp it was called, although it was hardly limited to that.
They made a sad little procession as they passed through the street of
the quaint old town. Some jeered at them, but for the most part the
people watched silently as they went by. Either they had not the spirit
for ridicule, or they were too accustomed to such sights to be moved to
comment.
Tom thought he had never in his life seen so many cripples; and instead
of feeling sorry for himself his pity was aroused for these maimed young
fellows, hanging on crutches and with armless coat sleeves, hollow-eyed
and sallow, who braved the law to see the little cavalcade go by. For
later he learned that a heavy fine was imposed on these poor wretches if
they showed themselves before enemy prisoners, and he wondered where
they got the money to pay the fines.
The prison camp was in the form of a great oval and looked as if it
might formerly have been a "rice track," as the all-knowing Tennert had
said. It was entirely surrounded by a high barbed wire fence, the
vicious wire interwoven this way and that into a mesh, the very sight of
which must have been forbidding to the ambitious fugitive. It was not,
however, electrified as in the strictly military prisons and on the
frontiers. Tom was told that this was because it was chiefly a civilian
camp, but he later learned that it was because of a shortage of coal.
The buildings which had formerly been stables and open stalls had been
converted into living quarters, and odds and ends of lumber gathered
from the neighboring town had been used to throw up rough shacks for
additional quarters.
Straw was the only bedding and such food as the authorities supplied was
dumped onto rusty tin dishes held out by the hungry prisoners. Some of
these dishes had big holes in them and when such a plate became unusable
it behooved its possessor to make friends with someone whose dish was
not so far gone and share it with him. Some of the men carved wooden
dishes, for there was nothing much to do with one's time, until their
knives were taken from them. The life was one of grinding monotony and
utter squalor, and the time which Tom spent there was the nightmare of
his life.
Occasionally someone from the Spanish Embassy in Berlin would visit the
camp in the interest of the Americans, the effect of these visits
usually being to greatly anger the retired old German officer who was
commandant. He had a face like the sun at noon-day, a voice like a
cannon, and the mere asking of a question set him into a rage.
Many of the prisoners, of whom not a few were young Americans, received
packages from home, through neutral sources--food, games, tobacco--which
were always shared with their comrades. But Tom was slow in getting
acquainted and before he had reached the stage of intimacy with anyone,
something happened. He still retained his companionable status with
Tennert and Freddie, but they fell in with their own set from good old
"Blighty" and Tom saw little of them.
There was absolutely no rule of life in the prison camp. They were
simply kept from getting away. Besides conferring this favor upon them,
about the only thing which the German government did was to send a
doctor around occasionally to look down their throats and inspect their
tongues. If a prisoner became ill, it behooved him to find another
prisoner who had studied medicine and then wait until old General
Griffenhaus was in a sufficiently good humor to give him medicines.
General Griffenhaus was not cruel; perhaps he would have been pleasant
if he had known how.
As fast as Tom learned the custom, he adapted himself to the lazy,
go-as-you-please kind of life. He scared up a rusty tin plate, made
himself a straw bed in a boarded-in box stall, got hold of an old burlap
bag which he wore as a kind of tunic while washing his clothes, and
idled about listening to the war experiences of others. He had thought
his own experiences rather remarkable, but now they seemed so tame that
he did not venture to tell them. Fights with German raiders, rescues
after days spent on the ocean, chats about the drive for Paris, the
"try" at Verdun, the adventures of captured aviators--these things and
many more, were familiarly discussed in the little sprawling groups
among which he came to be a silent listener. In a way, it reminded him
of camping and campfire yarns, except for the squalor and disorder.
Of course, there was general work to be done, but the officials did not
concern themselves about this until it became absolutely necessary. No
one could say that the German discipline was strict. When the prisoners
discovered that one or other of their number was good at this or that
sort of work they elected him to attend to those matters--whether it was
sweeping, settling quarrels, cooking, writing letters, petitioning "Old
Griff," shaving, pulling teeth, or what not. Each prisoner contributed
his knowledge and experience to make life bearable for all. The camp was
a _democracy_, but Germany didn't seem to object. If the prisoners
wished to dig a drain trench or a refuse pit, they asked for shovels.
And sometimes they got them. Prisoners, ragged and forlorn, came to be
known by the most dignified titles. There was the "consulting
architect," the "sanitary inspector," the "secretary of state," the
"chairman of the committee on kicks," etc.
And one momentous day Tom met the "chief engineer."