PRISONERS AND CAPTIVES
The church was half in ruins. Great portions of the roof had been torn
away by shell-fire, and there were gaping holes in the walls through
which could be caught glimpses of sentries going backwards and
forwards. Sometimes a grey battalion swung by; sometimes a German
officer peered in curiously, with a sneer on his lips. The drone of
aircraft came from above, through the holes where the rafters showed
black against the sky. Ever the guns boomed savagely from beyond.
There were no longer any seats in the church. They had all been broken
up for camp-fires—even the oaken pulpit had gone. The great empty space
had been roughly cleared of fallen masonry, which had been flung in
heaps against the wall; on the stone floor filthy straw was thinly
spread. On the straw lay row upon row of wounded men—very quiet for the
most part; they had found that it did not pay to make noise enough to
annoy the guards who smoked and played cards in a corner.
The long day—how long only the men on the straw knew—was drawing to a
close. The sun sank behind the western window, which the guns had
spared; and the stained glass turned to a glory of scarlet and gold and
blue. The shafts of colour lay across the broken altar, whence
everything had been stripped; they bathed the shattered walls in a
beauty that was like a cloak over the nakedness of their ruin. Slowly
they crept over the floor, as the sun sank lower, touching the straw
with rosy fingers, falling gently on broken bodies and pain-drawn
faces; and weary eyes looked gratefully up to the window where a figure
of Christ with a child in His arms stood glorious in the light, and
blessed them with the infinite pity of His smile.
A little Cockney lad with a dirty bandage round his head, who had
tossed in pain all day on the chancel steps, turned to the window to
greet the daily miracle of the sunset.
“Worf waiting for, all the day, that is!” he muttered. The restlessness
left him, and his eyes closed, presently, in sleep.
Slowly the glory died away, and as it passed a little figure in a rusty
black cassock came in, making his way among the men on the straw. It
was the French priest, who had refused to leave his broken church: a
little, fat man, not in the least like a hero, but with as knightly a
soul as was ever found in armour and with lance in rest. He passed from
man to man, speaking in quaint English, occasionally dropping gladly
into French when he found some one able to answer him in his own
language. He had nothing to give them but water; but that he carried
tirelessly many times a day. His little store of bandages and ointment
had gone long ago, but he bathed wounds, helped cramped men to change
their position, and did the best he could to make the evil straw into
the semblance of a comfortable bed. To the helpless men on the floor of
the church his coming meant something akin to Paradise.
He paused near a little Irishman with a broken leg, a man of the Dublin
Fusiliers, whose pain had not been able to destroy his good temper.
“How are you to-night, _mon garcon?_”
“Yerra, not too bad, Father,” said the Irishman. “If I could have just
a taste of water, now?” He drank deeply as the priest lifted his head,
and sank back with a word of thanks.
“This feather pillow of mine is apt to slip if I don’t watch it,” he
said, wriggling the back of his head against the cold stone of the
floor, from which the straw had worked away. “I dunno could you gather
it up a bit, Father.” He grinned. “I’d ask you to put me boots under me
for a pillow, but if them thieving guards found them loose, they’d
shweep them from me.”
“Ss-h, my son!” the priest whispered warningly. He shook up a handful
of straw and made it as firm as he could under the man’s head. “It is
not prudent to speak so loud. Remember you cannot see who may be behind
you.”
“Indeed and I cannot,” returned Denny Callaghan. “I’ll remember,
Father. That’s great!” He settled his head thankfully on the straw
pillow. “I’ll sleep aisier to-night for that.”
“And _Monsieur le Capitaine_—has he moved yet?” The priest glanced at a
motionless form near them.
“Well, indeed he did, Father, this afternoon. He gev a turn, an’ he
said something like ‘Tired People.’ I thought there was great sense in
that, if he was talkin’ to us, so I was cheered up about him—but not a
word have I got out of him since. But it’s something that he spoke at
all.”
The _cure_ bent over the quiet figure. Two dark eyes opened, as if with
difficulty, and met his.
“Norah,” said Jim Linton. “Are you there, Norah?”
“I am a friend, my son,” said the _cure_. “Are you in pain?”
The dark eyes looked at him uncomprehendingly. Then he murmured,
“Water!”
“It is here.” The little priest held the heavy head, and Jim managed to
drink a little. Something like a shadow of a smile came into his eyes
as the priest wiped his lips. Then they closed again.
“If they would send us a doctor!” muttered the _cure_, in his own
language, longingly. “_Ma joi_, what a lad!” He looked down in
admiration at the splendid helpless body.
“He won’t die, Father, will he?”
“I do not know, my son. I can find no wound, except the one on his
head—nothing seems broken. Perhaps he will be better to-morrow.” He
gave the little Irishman his blessing and moved away. There were many
eager eyes awaiting him.
Jim was restless during the night; Denny Callaghan, himself unable to
sleep, watched him muttering and trying to turn, but unable to move.
“I doubt but his back’s broken,” said the little man ruefully. “Yerra,
what a pity!” He tried to soothe the boy with kind words; and towards
the dawn Jim slept heavily.
He woke when the sun was shining upon him through a rift in the wall.
The church was full of smothered sounds—stifled groans from helpless
men, stiffened by lying still, and trying to move. Jim managed to raise
himself a little, at which Denny Callaghan gave an exclamation of
relief.
“Hurroo! Are you better, sir?”
“Where am I?” Jim asked thickly.
“’Tis in a church you are, sir, though it’s not much like it,” said the
little man. “The Germans call it a hospital. ’Tis all I wish they may
have the like themselves, and they wounded. Are you better, sir?”
“I . . . think I’m all right,” Jim said. He was trying to regain his
scattered faculties. “So they’ve got me!” He tried to look at
Callaghan. “What’s your regiment?”
“The Dubs, sir. ’Tis hard luck; I kem back wounded from Suvla Bay and
they sent me out to the battalion here; and I’d not been with them a
week before I got landed again. Now ’tis a German prison ahead—and by
all one hears they’re not rest-camps.”
“No,” said Jim. He tried to move, but failed, sinking back with a
stifled groan. “I wish I knew if I was damaged much. Are there any
doctors here?”
“There was two, a while back. They fixed us up somehow, and we haven’t
seen a hair of them since. The guards throw rations—of a sort—at us
twice a day. ’Tis badly off we’d be, if it weren’t for the priest.”
“Is he French?”
“He is—and a saint, if there ever was one. There he comes now.”
Callaghan crossed himself reverently.
A hush had come over the church. The _cure_, in his vestments, had
entered, going slowly to the altar.
Jim struggled up on his elbow. There was perfect silence in the church;
men who had been talking ceased suddenly, men who moaned in their pain
bit back their cries. So they lay while the little priest celebrated
Mass, as he had done every morning since the Germans swept over his
village: at first alone, and, since the first few days to a silent
congregation of helpless men. They were of all creeds and some of no
creed at all: but they prayed after him as men learn to pray when they
are at grips with things too big for them. He blessed them, at the end,
with uplifted hand; and dim eyes followed him as he went slowly from
the church.
He was back among them, presently, in the rusty black cassock. The
guards had brought in the men’s breakfast—great cans of soup and loaves
of hard, dark bread. They put them down near the door, tramping out
with complete disregard of the helpless prisoners. The priest would see
to them, aided by the few prisoners who could move about, wounded
though they were. In any case the guard had no order to feed prisoners;
they were not nurse-maids, they said.
“Ah, my son! You are awake!”
Jim smiled up at the _cure_.
“Have I been asleep long, sir?”
“Three days. They brought you in last Friday night. Do you not
remember?”
“No,” said Jim. “I don’t remember coming here.” He drank some soup
eagerly, but shook his head at the horrible bread. The food cleared his
head, and when the little _cure_ had gone away, promising to return as
soon as possible, he lay quietly piecing matters together in his mind.
Callaghan helped him: the Dublins had been in the line next his own
regiment when they had gone “over the top” on that last morning.
“Oh, I remember all that well enough,” Jim said. “We took two lines of
trench, and then they came at us like a wall; the ground was grey with
them. And I was up on a smashed traverse, trying to keep the men
together, when it went up too.”
“A shell was it?”
Jim shook his head.
“A shell did burst near us, but it wasn’t that. No, the trench was
mined, and the mine went off a shade too late. They delayed, somehow;
it should have gone off if we took the trench, before they
counter-attacked. As it was, it must have killed as many of their men
as ours. They told me about it afterwards.”
“Afterwards?” said Callaghan, curiously. He looked at Jim, a little
doubtful as to whether he really knew what he was talking about. “Did
ye not come straight here then, sir?”
“I did not; I was buried,” said Jim grimly. “The old mine went up right
under me, and I went up too. I came down with what seemed like tons of
earth on top of me; I was covered right in, I tell you, only I managed
to get some of the earth away in front of my nose and mouth. I was
lying on my side, near the edge of a big heap of dirt, with my hands
near my face. If I’d been six inches further back there wouldn’t have
been the ghost of a chance for me. I got some of the earth and mud
away, and found I could breathe, just as I was choking. But I was
buried for all that. All our chaps were fighting on top of me!”
“D’ye tell me!” gasped Callaghan incredulously.
“I could feel the boots,” Jim said. “I’m bruised with them yet. What
time did we go over that morning?—nine o’clock, wasn’t it?”
“It was, sir.”
“Well, it was twelve or one o’clock when they dug me out. They re-took
the trench, and started to dig themselves in, and they found me; I’ve a
spade-cut on my hand. My Aunt, that was a long three hours!”
“Did they treat you decent, sir?”
“They weren’t too bad,” Jim said. “I couldn’t move; I suppose it was
the weight on me, and the bruising—at least, I hope so. They felt me
all over—there was a rather decent lieutenant there, who gave me some
brandy. He told me he didn’t think there was anything broken. But I
couldn’t stir, and it hurt like fury when they touched me.”
“And how long were you there, sir?”
“They had to keep me until night—there was no way of sending back
prisoners. So I lay on a mud-heap, and the officer-boy talked to me—he
had been to school in England.”
“That’s where they larned him any decency he had,” said Callaghan.
“It might be. But he wasn’t a bad sort. He looked after me well enough.
Then, after nightfall, they sent a stretcher party over with me. The
German boy shook hands with me when we were starting, and said he was
afraid he wouldn’t see me again, as we were pretty sure to be shelled
by the British.”
“And were you, sir?”
“Rather. The first thing I knew was a bit of shrapnel through the
sleeve of my coat; I looked for the hole this morning, to see if I was
remembering rightly, and sure enough, here it is.” He held up his arm,
and showed a jagged tear in his tunic. “But that’s where I stop
remembering anything. I suppose I must have caught something else then.
Why is my head tied up? It was all right when they began to carry me
over.”
“Ye have a lump the size of an egg low down on the back of your head,
sir,” said Callaghan. “And a nasty little cut near your temple.”
“H’m!” said Jim. “I wondered why it ached! Well I must have got those
from our side on the way across. I hope they got a Boche or two as
well.”
“I dunno,” Callaghan said. “The fellas that dumped you down said
something in their own haythin tongue. I didn’t understand it, but it
sounded as if they were glad to be rid of you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t blame them,” Jim said. “I’m not exactly a
featherweight, and it can’t be much fun to be killed carrying the enemy
about, whether you’re a Boche or not.”
He lay for a while silently, thinking. Did they know at home yet? he
wondered anxiously. And then he suddenly realized that his fall must
have looked like certain death: that if they had heard anything it
would be that he had been killed. He turned cold at the thought. _What_
had they heard—his father, Norah? And Wally—what did he think? Was
Wally himself alive? He might even be a prisoner. He turned at that
thought to Callaghan, his sudden move bringing a stifled cry to his
lips.
“Did they—are there any other officers of my regiment here?”
“There are not,” said Callaghan. “I got the priest to look at your
badges, sir, the way he could find out if there was anny more of ye.
But there is not. Them that’s here is mostly Dublins and Munsters, with
a sprinkling of Canadians. There’s not an officer or man of the
Blankshires here at all, barring yourself.”
“Will the Germans let us communicate with our people?”
“Communicate, is it?” said the Irishman. “Yerra, they’ll not let anyone
send so much as a scratch on a post-card.” He dropped his voice.
“Whisht now, sir: the priest’s taking all our addresses, and he’ll do
his best to send word to every one at home.”
“But can he depend on getting through?”
“Faith, he cannot. But ’tis the only chance we’ve got. The poor man’s
nothing but a prisoner himself; he’s watched if he goes tin yards from
the church. So I dunno, at all, will he ever manage it, with the
suspicions they have of him.”
Jim sighed impatiently. He could do nothing, then, nothing to keep the
blow from falling on the two dear ones at home. He thought of trying to
bribe the German guards, and felt for his pocket-book, but it was gone;
some careful Boche had managed to relieve him of it while he had been
unconscious. And he was helpless, a log—while over in England Norah and
his father were, perhaps, already mourning him as dead. His thoughts
travelled to Billabong, where Brownie and Murty O’Toole and the others
kept the home ready for them all, working with the love that makes
nothing a toil, and planning always for the great day that should bring
them all back. He pictured the news arriving—saw Brownie’s dismayed old
face, and heard her cry of incredulous pain. And there was nothing he
could do. It seemed unbelievable that such things could be, in a sane
world. But then, the world was no longer sane; it had gone mad nearly
two years before, and he was only one of the myriad atoms caught into
the swirl of its madness.
The _cure_ came again, presently, and saw his troubled face. “You are
in pain, my son?”
“No—I’m all right if I keep quiet,” Jim answered. “But it’s my people.
Callaghan says you will try to let them know, Father.”
“I am learning you all,” said the priest, “names, regiments, and
numbers is it not? I dare not put them on paper: I have been searched
three times already, even to my shoes. But I hope that my chance will
come before long. Then I will send them to your War Office.” He beamed
down on Jim so hopefully that it seemed rather likely that he would
find a private telegraph office of his own, suddenly. “Now I will learn
your name and regiment.” He repeated them several times, nodding his
head.
“Yes, that is an easy one,” he said. “Some of them are very terrible,
to a Frenchman; our friend here”—he looked quaintly at Callaghan—“has a
name which it twists the tongue to say. And now, my son, I would like
to examine you, since you are conscious. I am the only doctor—a poor
one, I fear. But perhaps we will find out together that there is
nothing to be uneasy about.”
That, indeed, was what they did find out, after a rather agonizing
half-hour. Jim was quite unable to move his legs, being so bruised that
there was scarcely a square inch of him that was not green and blue and
purple. One hip bore the complete impress of a foot, livid and angry.
“Yes, that chap jumped on me from a good height,” Jim said when the
_cure_ exclaimed at it. “I thought he had smashed my leg.”
“He went near it,” said the _cure_. “Indeed, my son, you are beaten to
a jelly. But that will recover itself. You can breathe without pain?
That is well. Now we will look at the head.” He unwrapped the bandages
and felt the lump tenderly. “Ah, that is better; a little concussion, I
think, _mon brave_; it is that which kept you so quiet when you stayed
with us at first. And the cut heals well; that comes of being young and
strong, with clean, healthy blood.” He bathed the head, and replaced
the bandages, sighing that he had no clean ones. “But with you it
matters little; you will not need them in a few days. Then perhaps we
will wash these and they will be ready for the next poor boy.” He
smiled at Jim. “Move those legs as much as you can, my son, and rub
them.” He trotted away.
“And that same is good advice,” said Callaghan. “It will hurt to move,
sir, and you beaten to a pulp first and then stiffening for the three
days you’re after lying here; ’tis all I wish I could rub you, with a
good bottle of Elliman’s to do it with. But if them Huns move you
’twill hurt a mighty lot more than if you move yourself. Themselves is
the boys for that; they think they’ve got a feather in their caps if
they get an extra yelp out of annywan. So do the best you can, sir.”
“I will,” said Jim—and did his best, for long hours every day. It was
weary work, with each movement torture, and for a time very little
encouragement came in the shape of improvement: then, slowly, with
rubbing and exercise, the stiffened muscles began to relax. Callaghan
cheered him on, forgetting his own aching leg in his sympathy for the
boy in his silent torment. In the intervals of “physical jerks,” Jim
talked to his little neighbour, whose delight knew no bounds when he
heard that Jim knew and cared for his country. He himself was a Cork
man, with a wife and two sons; Jim gathered that their equal was not to
be found in any town in Ireland. Callaghan occasionally lamented the
“foolishness” that had kept him in the Army, when he had a right to be
home looking after Hughie and Larry. “’Tis not much the Army gives you,
and you giving it the best years of your life,” he said. “I’d be better
out of it, and home with me boys.”
“Then you wouldn’t let them go to the war, if they were old enough?”
Jim asked.
“If they were old enough ’twould not be asking my liberty they’d be,”
rejoined Mr. Callaghan proudly. “Is it _my_ sons that ’ud shtand out of
a fight like this?” He glared at Jim, loftily unconscious of any
inconsistency in his remarks.
“Well, there’s plenty of your fellow-countrymen that won’t go and
fight, Cally!” said the man beyond him—a big Yorkshireman.
“There’s that in all countries,” said Callaghan calmly. “They didn’t
all go in your part of the country, did they, till they were made?
Faith, I’m towld there’s a few there yet in odd corners—and likely to
be till after the war.” The men round roared joyfully, at the expense
of the Yorkshireman.
“And ’tis not in Ireland we have that quare baste the con-sci-en-tious
objector,” went on Callaghan, rolling the syllables lovingly on his
tongue. “That’s an animal a man wouldn’t like to meet, now! Whatever
our objectors are in Ireland, they’re surely never con-sci-en-tious!”
Jim gave a crack of laughter that brought the roving grey eye squarely
upon him.
“Even in Australia, that’s the Captain’s country,” said the soft Irish
voice, “I’ve heard tell there’s a boy or two there out of khaki—maybe
they’re holding back for conscription too. But wherever the boys are
that don’t go, none of them have a song and dance made about them,
barring only the Irish.”
“What about your Sinn Feiners?” some one sang out. Callaghan’s face
fell.
“Yerra, they have the country destroyed,” he admitted. “And nine out of
every ten don’t know annything about politics or annything else at all,
only they get talked over, and towld that they’re patriots if they’ll
get howld of a gun and do a little drilling at night—an’ where’s the
country boy that wouldn’t give his ears for a gun! An’ the English
Gov’mint, that could stop it all with the stroke of a pen, hasn’t the
pluck to bring in conscription in Ireland.”
“You’re right there, Cally,” said some one.
“I know well I’m right. But the thousands and tens of thousands of
Irish boys that went to the war and fought till they died—they’ll be
forgotten, and the Sinn Fein scum’ll be remembered. If the Gov’mint had
the pluck of a mouse they’d be all right. I tell you, boys, ’twill be
the Gov’mint’s own fault if we see the haythin Turks parading the fair
fields of Ireland, with their long tails held up by the Sinn Feiners!”
Callaghan relapsed into gloomy contemplation of this awful possibility,
and refused to be drawn further. Even when Jim, desiring to be tactful,
mentioned a famous Irish V.C. who had, single-handed, slain eight
Germans, he declined to show any enthusiasm.
“Ah, what V.C.!” he said sourly. “Sure, his owld father wouldn’t make a
fuss of him. ‘Why didn’t he do more?’ says he. ‘I often laid out twenty
men myself with a stick, and I coming from Macroom Fair. It is a bad
trial of Mick that he could kill only eight, and he having a rifle and
bayonet!’ he says. Cock him up with a V.C.!” After which Jim ceased to
be consoling and began to exercise his worst leg—knowing well that the
sight of his torments would speedily melt Denny’s heart and make him
forget the sorrows of Ireland.
The guards did not trouble them much; they kept a strict watch, which
was not difficult, as all the prisoners were partially disabled; and
then considered their duty discharged by bringing twice a day the
invariable meal of soup and bread. No one liked to speculate on what
had gone to the making of the soup; it was a pale, greasy liquid, with
strange lumps in it, and tasted as dish-water may be supposed to taste.
Jim learned to eat the sour bread by soaking it in the soup. He had no
inclination to eat, but he forced himself to swallow the disgusting
meals, so that he might keep up his strength, just as he worked his
stiff limbs and rubbed them most of the day. For there was but one idea
in Jim Linton’s mind—escape.
Gradually he became able to sit up, and then to move a little, hobbling
painfully on a stick which had been part of a broken pew, and
endeavouring to take part in looking after the helpless prisoners, and
in keeping the church clean, since the guards laughed at the idea of
helping at either. Jim had seen something of the treatment given to
wounded German soldiers in England, and he writhed to think of them,
tended as though they were our own sick, while British prisoners lay
and starved in filthy holes. But the little _cure_ rebuked him.
“But what would you, my son? They are _canaille_—without breeding,
without decency, without hearts. Are we to put ourselves on that
level?”
“I suppose not—but it’s a big difference, Father,” Jim muttered.
“The bigger the difference, the more honour on our side,” said the
little priest. “And things pass. Long after you and I and all these
poor lads are forgotten it will be remembered that we came out of this
war with our heads up. But they——!” Suddenly fierce scorn filled his
quiet eyes. “They will be the outcasts of the world!”
Wherefore Jim worked on, and tried to take comfort by the _cure’s_
philosophy; although there were many times when he found it hard to
digest. It was all very well to be cheerful about the verdict of the
future, but difficult to forget the insistent present, with the heel of
the Hun on his neck. It was sometimes easier to be philosophic by
dreaming of days when the positions should be reversed.
He was able to walk a little when the order came to move. The guards
became suddenly busy; officers whom the prisoners had not seen before
came in and out, and one evening the helpless were put roughly into
farm carts and taken to the station, while those able to move by
themselves were marched after them—marched quickly, with bayonet points
ready behind them to prod stragglers. It was nearly dark when they were
thrust roughly into closed trucks, looking back for the last time on
the little _cure_, who had marched beside them, with an arm for two
sick men, and now stood on the platform, looking wistfully at them. He
put up his hand solemnly.
“God keep you, my sons!”
A German soldier elbowed him roughly aside. The doors of the trucks
were clashed together, leaving them in darkness; and presently, with
straining and rattling and clanging, the train moved out of the
station.
“Next stop, Germany!” said Denny Callaghan from the corner where he had
been put down. “And not a ticket between the lot of us!”