ROSSBACH
It was September 25th that we left the prison-camp and came to
Rossbach--eighteen miles south on the railway. The six of us, with
the German guard, had a compartment to ourselves, and as there was
a map on the wall which showed the country south of Rossbach, over
which we hoped to travel, I studied it as hard as I could without
attracting the attention of the guard, and afterwards entered on my
map the information I had gained.
It was rather a pretty country we travelled through, with small farms
and fairly comfortable-looking buildings. The new houses are built of
frame or brick, and are just like our own, but the presence of the
old stone buildings, gray and dilapidated, and old enough to belong
to the time of the Crusaders, kept us reminded that we were far from
home.
However, we were in great humor that morning. Before us was a Great
Adventure; there were dangers and difficulties in the way, but at
the end of the road was Liberty! And that made us forget how rough
the going was likely to be. Besides, at the present time we were
travelling south--toward Switzerland. We were on our way.
At Wetzlar, one of the stations near Giessen, a kind-faced old German
came to the window and talked to us in splendid English.
"I would like to give you something, boys," he said, "but"--he
shrugged his shoulders--"you know--I daren't."
The guard pretended not to hear a word, and at that moment was waving
his hand to a group of girls--just the regular station-goers, who
meet the trains in Canada. This was, I think, the only place I saw
them, for the women of Germany, young and old, are not encouraged to
be idle or frivolous.
"I just wish I could give you something," the old man repeated,
feeling in his pocket as if looking for a cigar.
Then Clarke, one of our boys, leaned out of the window and said,
"I'll tell you what we would like best of all, old man--if you
happen to have half a dozen of them on you--we'll take tickets to
Canada--six will do--if you happen to have them right with you!
And we're ready to start right now, too!"
The German laughed and said, "You'd better try to forget about
Canada, boys."
* * *
The guards who brought us to Rossbach went straight back to Giessen,
after handing us over to the guards there, and getting, no doubt, an
official receipt for us, properly stamped and signed.
Rossbach has a new town and an old, and, the station being in the new
town, we were led along the road to the old town, where the farming
people live. It is an old village, with the houses, pig-pens, and
cow-stables all together, and built so close that it would be quite
possible to look out of the parlor window and see how the pigs are
enjoying their evening meal or whether the cow has enough bedding.
There have been no improvements there for a hundred years, except
that they have electric lighting everywhere, even in the pig-pens.
There were no lights in the streets, though, I noticed, and I saw
afterwards that a street light would be a foolish extravagance,
for the people go to bed at dark. They have the real idea of
daylight-saving, and do not let any of it escape them.
The guards took us around to the houses, and we created considerable
interest, for strangers are a sensation at Rossbach; and, besides,
prisoners are cheap laborers, and the thrifty German farmer does not
like to miss a bargain.
The little fellows were the first choice, for they looked easier to
manage than those of us who were bigger. Clarke was taken by a woman
whose husband was at the front, and who had five of as dirty children
as I ever saw at one time. We asked one little boy his age, which he
said was "fünf," but we thought he must be older--no child could get
as dirty as that in five years!
I was left until almost the last, and when a pleasant-looking old
gentleman appeared upon the scene, I decided I would take a hand in
the choosing, so I said, "I'll go with you."
I was afraid there might be another large family, all with colds in
their heads, like the five which Clarke had drawn, waiting for me, so
that prompted me to choose this benevolent-looking old grandfather.
The old man took me home with him to one of the best houses in the
village, although there was not much difference between them. His
house was made of plaster which had been whitewashed, and had in it a
good-sized kitchen, where the family really lived, and an inner room
which contained a large picture of the Royal Family, all in uniform,
and very gorgeous uniforms, too. Even the young daughter had a
uniform which looked warlike enough for a Lieutenant-Colonel's. There
was also a desk in this room, where the father of the family--for
the old man who brought me in was the grandfather--conducted his
business. He was some sort of a clerk, probably the reeve of the
municipality, and did not work on the farm at all. There was a fine
home-made carpet on the floor, but the room was bare and cheerless,
with low ceiling, and inclined to be dark.
When we entered the kitchen, the family greeted me cordially, and I
sat down to dinner with them. There were three girls and one brother,
who was a soldier and home on leave.
Bromley went to work for a farmer on the other side of the
village, but I saw him each night, for we all went back to a large
three-storied building, which may once have been a boarding-house, to
sleep each night, the guard escorting us solemnly both to and from
work each day. This was a very good arrangement for us, too, for we
had to be through work and have our supper over by eight o'clock each
night.
After our prison diet, the meals we had here were ample and almost
epicurean. We had soup--the real thing--made from meat, with plenty
of vegetables; coffee with milk, but no sugar; cheese, homemade but
very good; meat, both beef and pork; eggs in abundance; but never any
pastry; and lots of potatoes, boiled in their skins, and fried.
There were plenty of fruit-trees, too, in Rossbach, growing along the
road, and, strange to say, unmolested by the youngsters. The trees
appear to belong to the municipality, and the crop is sold by auction
each year to the highest bidder. They are quite ornamental, too,
standing in a straight row on each side of the road.
The farmers who lived in this village followed the oldest methods of
farming I had ever seen, though I saw still more primitive methods in
Hanover. Vegetables, particularly potatoes and mangels, were grown in
abundance, and I saw small fields of stubble, though what the grain
was I do not know. I saw a threshing-machine drawn by a tractor going
along the road, and one of the girls told me it was made in England.
The woman who had the farm next to the one I was on was a widow,
her husband having been killed in the war, and she had no horses at
all, and cultivated her tiny acres with a team of cows. It seems
particularly consistent with German character to make cows work! They
hate to see anything idle, and particularly of the female sex.
Each morning we rode out to the field, for the farms are scattered
over a wide area, and three-acre and five-acre fields are the average
size. The field where we went to work digging potatoes was about
a mile distant from the house, and when I say we rode, I mean the
brother and I--the girls walked. I remonstrated at this arrangement,
but the girls themselves seemed to be surprised that it should be
questioned, and the surly young brother growled something at me which
I knew was a reflection on my intelligence.
When we got into the field and began to dig potatoes, good,
clear-skinned yellow ones, Lena Schmidt, one of the girls, who was a
friend of the family, though not a relation, I think, began to ask me
questions about Canada (they put the accent on the third syllable).
Lena had been to Sweden, so she told me proudly, and had picked up
quite a few English words. She was a good-looking German girl, with
a great head of yellow hair, done in braids around her head. The
girls were all fairly good-looking though much tanned from outdoor
work. Lena had heard women worked in the house, and not outside, in
Canada--was it true?
I assured her it was true.
"But," said Lena, "what do they do in house--when bread is made and
dish-wash?"
I told her our women read books and played the piano and made
themselves pretty clothes and went visiting and had parties, and
sometimes played cards.
Of course it was not all told as easily as this sounds.
I could see that Lena was deeply impressed, and so were the two
others when she passed it on. Then she began to question me again.
"Are there many women in Canada--women in every house--like here?"
I told her there were not nearly so many women in Canada as here;
indeed, there were not enough to go around, and there were lots of
men who could not get married for that reason.
When Lena passed that on, excitement reigned, and German questions
were hurled at me! I think the three girls were ready to leave home!
I gently reminded them of the war and the complications it had caused
in the matter of travelling. They threw out their hands with a
gesture of despair--there could be no Canada for them. "Fertig," they
said--which is the word they use to mean "no chance," "no use to try
further."
Lena, however, having travelled as far as Sweden, and knowing,
therefore, something of the world's ways, was not altogether without
hope.
"The war--will be some day done!" she said--and we let it go at that.
Lena began to teach me German, and used current events as the basis
of instruction. Before the end of the first day I was handling
sentences like this--"Herr Schmidt expects to have his young child
christened in the church next Sunday at 2 o'clock, God willing."
Helene Romisch, the daughter of the house, had a mania for knowing
every one's age, and put the question to me in the first ten minutes
of our acquaintance. She had evidently remembered every answer she
had ever received to her questions, for she told me the age of every
one who passed by on the road, and when there was no one passing she
gave me a list of the family connections of those who had gone, or
those who were likely to go, with full details as to birthdays.
I think it was Eliza, the other girl, who could speak no English and
had to use Lena as interpreter, who first broached the tender subject
of matrimony.
Was I married?
I said, "No."
Then, after a few minutes' conference--
Had I a girl?
"No--I hadn't," I told them.
Then came a long and heated discussion, and Lena was hard put to it,
with her scanty store of English words, and my recently acquired
German, to frame such a delicate question. I thought I knew what it
was going to be--but I did not raise a hand to help.
Why hadn't I a girl? Did I not like girls? or what?
I said I did like girls; that was not the reason. Then all three
talked at once, and I knew a further explanation was going to be
demanded if Lena's English could frame it. This is the form in which
the question came:
"You have no girl, but you say you like girls; isn't it all right to
have a girl?"
Then I told them it was quite a proper thing to have a girl; I had no
objections at all; in fact, I might some day have a girl myself.
Then Lena opened her heart, seeing that I was not a woman-hater, and
told me she had a beau in Sweden; but I gathered from her manner of
telling it that his intentions were somewhat vague yet. Eliza had
already admitted that she had a "fellow," and had shown me his
picture. Helene made a bluff at having one, too, though she did not
seem able to give names or dates. Then Lena, being the spokeswoman,
told me she could get a girl for me, and that the young lady was
going to come out to the potato digging. "She see you carry
water--she like you," declared Lena. This was interesting, too, and
I remembered that when I was carrying water from the town pump the
first day I was there, I had seen a black-eyed young lady of about
sixteen standing in the road, and when I passed she had bade me
"Good-day" in splendid English.
On Saturday, Fanny Hummel, for that was the black-eyed one's name,
did come out. The three girls had a bad attack of giggles all the
time Fanny and I were talking, for Fanny could speak a little
English, having studied a year at Friedberg. She had a brother in
the army who was an officer, and she told me he could speak English
"perfect." As far as her English would go, she told me about
Friedberg and her studies there, but when I tried to find out what
she thought about the war, I found that Fanny was a properly trained
German girl, and didn't think in matters of this kind.
When the day's work was over, Fanny and I walked back to town with
the three girls following us in a state of partial collapse from
giggles. That night, Lena wanted to know how things stood. Was Fanny
my girl? I was sorry to break up such a pleasant little romance, but
was compelled to state with brutal frankness that Fanny was not my
girl!
I do not know how Fanny received this report, which I presumed would
be given to her the next day, for the next day was the one we had
selected for our departure.