INTO GERMANY
Roulers is a good-sized town in West Flanders, of about thirty
thousand population, much noted for its linen manufacture; and has a
great church of St. Michael with a very high tower, which we could
see for miles. But I do not remember much about the look of the town,
for I could hardly drag my feet. It seemed as if every step would be
my last. But I held on some way, until we reached the stopping-place,
which happened to be an unused school. The men who had not been
wounded had arrived several hours ahead of us.
When, at last, I sat down on one of the benches, the whole place
seemed to float by me. Nothing would stand still. The sensation was
like the water dizziness which makes one feel he is being rapidly
propelled upstream. But after sitting awhile, it passed, and I began
to recognize some of our fellows. Frost, of my own battalion, was
there, and when I told him I had had nothing to eat since the early
morning of the day before, he immediately produced a hardtack biscuit
and scraped out the bottom of his jam tin. They had been served with
a ration of war-bread, and several of the boys offered me a share of
their scanty allowance, but the first mouthful was all I could take.
It was sour, heavy, and stale.
The school pump had escaped the fate of the last pump I had seen, and
was in good working order, and its asthmatic creaking as it brought
up the stream of water was music in my ears. We went out in turns and
drank like thirsty cattle. I drank until my jaws were stiff as if
with mumps, and my ears ached, and in a few minutes my legs were tied
in cramps.
While I was vainly trying to rub them out with my one good hand, Fred
McKelvey came up and told me a sure cure for leg-cramp. It is to turn
the toes up as far as possible, and straighten out the legs, and it
worked a cure for me. He said he had taken the cramps out of his legs
this way when he was in the water.
I remember some of the British Columbia boys who were there.
Sergeants Potentier, George Fitz, and Mudge, of Grand Forks; Reid,
Diplock, and Johnson, of Vancouver; Munroe and Wildblood, of
Rossland; Keith, Palmer, Larkins, Scott, and Croak. Captain
Scudamore, my Company Captain, came over to where I sat, and kindly
inquired about my wounds. He wrote down my father's address, too,
and said he would try to get a letter to him.
There was a house next door--quite a fine house with a neat paling
and long, shuttered windows, at which the vines were beginning to
grow. It looked to be in good condition, except that part of the
verandah had been torn away. The shutters were closed on its long,
graceful windows, giving it the appearance of a tall, stately woman
in heavy mourning.
When we were at the pump, we heard a gentle tapping, and, looking up,
we saw a very handsome dark-eyed Belgian woman at one of the windows.
Instinctively we saluted, and quick as a flash she held a Union Jack
against the pane!
A cheer broke from us involuntarily, and the guards sprang to
attention, suspecting trouble. But the flag was gone as quickly as
it came, and when we looked again, the shutters were closed and the
deep, waiting silence had settled down once more on the stately house
of shutters.
But to us it had become suddenly possessed of a living soul! The
flash of those sad black eyes, as well as the glimpse of the flag,
seemed to call to us to carry on! They typified to us exactly what
we were fighting for!
After the little incident of the flag, it was wonderful how bright
and happy we felt. Of course, I know, the ministrations of the pump
helped, for we not only drank all we wanted, but most of the boys had
a wash, too; but we just needed to be reminded once in awhile of what
the real issues of the war were.
Later in the day, after we had been examined by another medical man,
who dressed our wounds very skillfully, and gently, too, we came back
to the school, and found there two heavily veiled Belgian women. They
had bars of chocolate for us, for which we were very grateful. They
were both in deep mourning, and seemed to have been women of high
social position, but their faces were very pale and sad, and when
they spoke their voices were reedy and broken, and their eyes were
black pools of misery. Some of the boys afterwards told me that their
daughters had been carried off by the Germans, and their husbands
shot before their eyes.
I noticed the absence of children and young girls on the streets.
There were only old men and women, it seemed, and the faces of these
were sad beyond expression. There were no outbursts of grief; they
seemed like people whose eyes were cried dry, but whose spirits were
still unbroken.
Later in the day we were taken to the station, to take the train for
the prison-camp at Giessen. Of course, they did not tell us where we
were going. They did not squander information on us or satisfy our
curiosity, if they could help it.
The station was full of people when we got there, and there seemed
to be a great deal of eating done at the stations. This was more
noticeable still in German stations, as I saw afterwards.
Our mode of travelling was by the regular prisoner train which had
lately--quite lately--been occupied by horses. It had two small,
dirty windows, and the floor was bare of everything but dirt. We were
dumped into it--not like sardines, for they fit comfortably together,
but more like cordwood that is thrown together without being piled.
If we had not had arms or legs or heads, there would have been just
room for our bodies, but as it was, everybody was in everybody's way,
and as many of us were wounded, and all of us were tired and hungry,
we were not very amiable with each other.
I tried to stand up, but the jolting of the car made me dizzy, and
so I doubled up on the floor, and I don't know how many people sat
on me. I remember one of the boys I knew, who was beside me on the
floor, Fairy Strachan. He had a bad wound in his chest, given him by
a dog of a German guard, who prodded him with a bayonet after he was
captured, for no reason at all. Fortunately the bayonet struck a rib,
and so the wound was not deep, but not having been dressed, it was
very painful.
I could not sleep at all that night, for the air was stifling, and
somebody's arm or foot or head was always bumping into me. I wonder
if Robinson Crusoe ever remembered to be thankful for fresh air and
room to stretch himself! We asked the guards for water, for we soon
grew very thirsty, and when we stopped at a station, one of the boys,
looking out, saw the guard coming with a pail of water, and cried
out, "Here's water--boys!" The thought of a drink put new life in us,
and we scrambled to our feet. It was water, all right, and plenty
of it, but it was boiling hot and we could not drink it; and we
could not tell from the look of opaque stupidity on the face of the
guard whether he did it intentionally or not. He may have been a
boiling-water-before-meals advocate. He looked balmy enough for
anything!
[Illustration: Officers' Quarters in a German Military Prison]
At some of the stations the civilians standing on the platform filled
our water-bottles for us, but it wasn't enough. We had only two
water-bottles in the whole car. However, at Cologne, a boy came
quickly to the car window at our call, and filled our water-bottles
from a tap, over and over again. He would run as fast as he could
from the tap to the window, and left a bottle filling at the tap
while he made the trip. In this way every man in the car got enough
to drink, and this blue-eyed, shock-headed lad will ever live in
grateful memory.
The following night after midnight we reached Giessen, and were
unloaded and marched through dark streets to the prison-camp, which
is on the outskirts of the city. We were put into a dimly lighted
hut, stale and foul-smelling, too, and when we put up the windows,
some of our own Sergeants objected on account of the cold, and shut
them down. Well, at least we had room if we hadn't air, and we
huddled together and slept, trying to forget what we used to believe
about the need of fresh air.
As soon as the morning came, I went outside and watched a dull red,
angry sky flushing toward sunrise. Red in the morning sky denotes
wind, it is said, but we didn't need signs that morning to proclaim a
windy day, for the wind already swept the courtyard, and whipped the
green branches of the handsome trees which marked the driveway. My
spirits rose at once when I filled my lungs with air and looked up at
the scudding clouds which were being dogged across the sky by the wind.
A few straggling prisoners came out to wash at the tap in the
courtyard, and I went over to join them, for I was grimy, too, with
the long and horrible ride. With one hand I could make but little
progress, and was spreading the dirt rather than removing it, until a
friendly Belgian, seeing my difficulty, took his cake of soap and his
towel, and washed me well.
We were then given a ration of bread about two inches thick, and a
drink of something that tasted like water boiled in a coffee-pot, and
after this we were divided into ten groups. Those of us who knew each
other tried hard to stay together, but we soon learned to be careful
not to appear to be too anxious, for the guards evidently had
instructions to break up previous acquaintanceships.
The wounded were marched across the compound to the "Revier," a dull,
gray, solid-looking building, where again we were examined and
graded. Those seriously wounded were sent to the lazaret, or hospital
proper. I, being one of the more serious cases, was marched farther
on to the lazaret, and we were all taken to a sort of waiting-room,
and taken off in groups to the general bathroom to have a bath,
before getting into the hospital clothes.
With me was a young bugler of the Fifth Royal Highlanders, Montreal,
a little chap not more than fifteen, whose pink cheeks and curly hair
would have made an appeal to any human being: he looked so small and
lonesome and far from home. A smart young military doctor jostled
against the boy's shattered arm, eliciting from him a cry of pain,
whereupon he began to make fun of the little bugler, by marching
around him, making faces. It gave me a queer feeling to see a
grown-up man indulging in the tactics of a spoiled child, but I have
heard many people express the opinion, in which I now heartily agree,
that the Germans are a childish sort of people. They are stupidly
boastful, inordinately fond of adulation and attention, and peevish
and sulky when they cannot have their own way. I tried to imagine how
a young German boy would have been treated by one of our doctors, and
laughed to myself at the absurdity of the thought that they would
make faces at him!
The young bugler was examined before I was, and as he was marched out
of the room, the doctor who had made the faces grabbed at his kilt
with an insulting gesture, at which the lad attempted to kick him.
The doctor dodged the kick, and the Germans who were in the room
roared with laughter. I hated them more that minute than I had up to
that time.
The Belgian attendants who looked after the bathing of us were kind
and polite. One of them could speak a little English, and he tried
hard to get information regarding his country from us.
"Is it well?" he asked us eagerly. "My country--is it well?"
We thought of the shell-scarred country, with its piles of
smouldering ashes, its pallid women with their haunted faces, the
deathlike silence of the ruined streets. We thought of these things,
but we didn't tell him of them. We told him the war was going on in
great shape: the Allies were advancing all along the line, and were
going to be in Berlin by Christmas. It was worth the effort to see
his little pinched face brighten. He fairly danced at his work
after that, and when I saw him afterwards, he eagerly asked--"My
country--is it well?" I do not know why he thought I knew, or maybe
he didn't think so. But, anyway, I did my best. I gave him a glowing
account of the Allied successes, and painted a gloomy future for the
Kaiser, and I again had my reward, in his glowing face.
Everything we had was taken from us except shoes, socks, cap, and
handkerchief, and we did not see them again: neither did we get
another bath, although I was six weeks in the hospital.
The hospital clothes consisted of a pajama suit of much-faded
flannelette, but I was glad to get into it, and doubly glad to get
rid of my shirt and tunic, which were stiff on one side with dried
blood. From the lazaret, where I had my bath, I could see the gun
platform with its machine guns, commanding every part of the Giessen
Prison. The guard pointed it out to me, to quiet my nerves, I
suppose, and to scare me out of any thought of insubordination.
However, he need not have worried--I was not thinking of escaping
just then or starting an insurrection either. I was quite content to
lie down on the hard straw bed and pull the quilt over me and take
a good long rest.