The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prisoners of Mainz, by Alec Waugh This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: The Prisoners of Mainz Author: Alec Waugh Illustrator: R. T. Roussel Release Date: February 20, 2017 [EBook #54203] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRISONERS OF MAINZ *** Produced by Chuck Greif, MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) Contents. Index. List of Illustrations (In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.) (etext transcriber's note) Image of the bookcover is unavailable. THE PRISONERS OF MAINZ THE DOOM OF YOUTH. [Frontispiece. THE PRISONERS OF MAINZ BY ALEC WAUGH AUTHOR OF “THE LOOM OF YOUTH,” “RESENTMENT POEMS,” ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CAPTAIN R. T. ROUSSEL (P.O.W. MAINZ) LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd. 1919 Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. I, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. A BALLADE OF DEDICATION TO MY FELLOW-GEFANGENER A. H. CHANDLER Fast locked within the citadel, We’ve watched the hours of eight months fare Slowly towards the evening bell, And its cracked summons “clear the square.” We’ve watched the stately barges bear Seawards their teeming casks of wine, As we sat in the alcove there, Sipping the vintage of the Rhine. Ausgabe queues, we knew them well; Those thin lines straggling out like hair, Receding from an open cell, And finishing, the Lord knows where; And we have felt barbed wire tear Our breeches’ loose and draggled twine; But we’ve known hours less foul than fair, Sipping the vintage of the Rhine. We could forget the sauerkraut smell, Forget our weariness and share The phantasies that flocked pell mell About our unreal world; and there Across the thick, smoke-laden air Our loom of dreams was woven fine; We tracked illusion to its lair, Sipping the vintage of the Rhine. ENVOI Archie, we neither know nor care What waits for you, what fate is mine. This has been ours—to be friends there, Sipping the vintage of the Rhine. A. W. Boulogne, December 4th, 1918. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE THE GREAT OFFENSIVE 1 CHAPTER II ON THE WAY TO THE RHINE 18 CHAPTER III KARLSRUHE AND MILTON HAYES 37 CHAPTER IV THE HUNGRY DAYS 46 CHAPTER V THE PITT LEAGUE 63 CHAPTER VI THE GERMAN ATTITUDE 91 CHAPTER VII PARCELS 100 CHAPTER VIII OUR GENERAL TREATMENT 116 CHAPTER IX THE DAILY ROUND 129 CHAPTER X HOW WE DID NOT ESCAPE 152 CHAPTER XI THE ALCOVE 172 CHAPTER XII HOW WE AMUSED OURSELVES 193 CHAPTER XIII ARMISTICE DAYS 222 CHAPTER XIV FREEDOM 246 INDEX 267 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS To face page THE DOOM OF YOUTH Frontispiece “AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THE GERMANS CAME OVER” 16 OUR DAILY ROLL 48 THE ‘KANTINE’ AT MAINZ 56 THE QUEUE OUTSIDE THE PAYMASTER’S OFFICE 62 A PRISON CELL 104 A GALLANT ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE 162 THE BILLIARD-ROOM AT MAINZ 172 OUR PRISON SQUARE 194 “FIVE HUNDRED ODD OFFICERS WALKING ROUND THE SQUARE” 196 OUR LEADING LADY 214 LIEUT. MILTON HAYES AS “SILAS P. HAWKSHAW” 218 THE PRISONERS OF MAINZ CHAPTER I THE GREAT OFFENSIVE § 1 March 21st, 1918. The small box respirator, like the thirty-nine articles of the Faith, should be taken on trust; one is quite prepared to believe in its efficiency. Countless Base instructors have extolled it, countless memos from Division have confirmed their panegyrics; and with these credentials one carries it on one’s chest in a perfect faith; but one has no wish to put its merits to the test. No one if he can help it wishes to have his face surrounded by elastic and india-rubber, and his nose clamped viciously by bent iron; and for that reason my chief memory of March 21st was the prolonged discomfort of a gas-mask. For from the moment that the barrage opened at 5 a.m. the air was full of the insidious smell of gas. Masks were clapped on, and thus hooded the machine-gunners fumbled desperately in search of stoppages; it was an uncomfortable morning. Being stationed about two miles north of the left flank of the German attack, it was for us a much more comfortable morning than that spent by most of those south of Arras. For when the mist began to rise, it revealed no phantom figures; we did not find ourselves encircled, and outflanked, with the cheerful alternatives of a perpetual rest where we stood or of an indefinite sojourn on the wrong side of the line. Everything presented a very orderly appearance. Far away on the right was the dull noise of guns, but over the whole of the immediate front spread out the peaceful prospect of a programme of trench routine. “Seems as if Jerry weren’t coming over after all,” said the section corporal. “Looks like it,” I said. “Then I suppose as we’d better clean things up a bit, Sir.” “It would be as well.” {1} {2} {3} And the half-section settled down to the usual work of cleaning themselves, their guns, and their position. The infantry on the right were even more resigned to the uneventful. “This ’ere offensive was all wind up, Sir,” said the man at the strombos form, “they thought we was gettin’ a bit slack, I suppose, so they thought this scare ’ud smarten us up a bit; but I knew it all along, Sir; I’m too old a soldier to be taken in by that.” The runner from Battalion, however, brought quite a different story. “Been an attack all along the line, Arras to St. Quentin, but it’s been broken up absolutely; never even got the front line.” The man at the strombos form shifted suspiciously. “They not bin trying to come over ’ere. I never seen no Germans,” which was not surprising considering that from where he stood he could not see the front line at all. “No,” he went on, “there’s bin no offensive, and there won’t be one neither. It’s all a wind up.” At any rate, whether there had been an attempted attack or not, it seemed quite clear that it had not got very far. With that comforting certainty, I returned to the position, and having seen that the guns were clean, descended into the dugout and went to sleep. About two hours later a perspiring runner arrived. He was quite out of breath from dodging whizzbangs, and was in consequence incapable of logical statement. He said something about “Bullecourt.” The chit he brought explained. “Bullecourt, Ecoust, Noreil are in the Hands of the Enemy” It took at least five minutes to realise what this meant. To think that they had got as far as that. It had seemed so delightfully safe. One had walked along the Ecoust road in daylight, and there was a canteen at Noreil. And then that glorious dugout in Railway Reserve that we had covered with green canvas and festooned with semi-nudities from the Tatler, to think of some lordly Prussian straddling across the table, swigging champagne. It was an unspeakable liberty.... And then a little tardily followed the thought that Ecoust was not so many miles from Monchy, and that if the Germans had got as far as that on the right, there was very little reason why they should not do the same to us—an unpleasant consideration. But still everything seemed so delightfully quiet. Only an occasional whizzbang, or four—five—no one would have thought there was a war on. Still Ecoust was not so very far off; our parish had provided funds for a church army hut at St. Leger. They had been collecting for it hard when I had been on leave. Well, that must have gone west by now.... And at the top of the dugout I could hear the runner gradually recovering his breath and explaining the strategic situation in spasms. “You see, I heard the captin say to the adjutant, ‘Jones,’ he says, ‘the Jerrys’ got as far as Bullecourt,’ and when I heard that ... well ... I said to myself ... thank ’eavens I wasn’t there.” “And you was there two months ago, Kid.” “Where I was two months ago, as you say, and then I heard the captin say....” The remaining reflection was inaudible. The next morning passed very quietly, so quietly that we had almost forgotten the rumours of the preceding day. The limber corporal had assured the ration party that there had been a counter-attack with tanks, and that not only had Bullecourt been retaken, but Hendecourt and Riencourt as well. There seemed no cause for panic. The rum had come up as usual, and that was the main thing. After an afternoon of belt-cleaning the subsection arranged itself as usual into night reliefs, and then just before midnight came the news that the Division was evacuating to the “third” line. Whenever the military decide on a sudden action, they impart the information in a delightfully inconsequent way. For instance, on the eve of the Cambrai show, orders were sent round that in the case of an enemy withdrawal limbers would proceed to Hendecourt along the road in the map square U 29 B, and this request was then qualified by the statement, “It is no good looking for roads; there are none.” On this occasion the message was equally vague. It stated that the front system would be evacuated at 3 a.m., and ordered that all guns, tripods, belt-boxes, and ammunition would be immediately moved and stacked at the ration dump pending the arrival of limbers. The chit then added, “Secrecy is absolutely essential. On no account must the men know anything of this.” The reasons on which the authorities based their expectations that the men would move all their impedimenta to a ration dump, and yet remain in complete ignorance of the operation, are unfathomable. At any rate their hopes were unrealised. At the first mention of dismounted guns, Private Hawkins had sniffed the secret. “Got to shift, ’ave we, Sir? Then I suppose we’re going to have a war too, aren’t we, Sir?” “I should not be surprised,” I told him, and went below to superintend the packing of my kit. It was no easy matter. Things accumulate in the line; I always went up the line with a modestly filled pack, but by the time I came down, it needed a mailbag to hold the books and magazines that had gradually gathered round me, and after a fortnight in the same dugout my kit was in no condition for emergency transportation. My batman was examining it with a sorrowful face. “You’ll ’ave to dump most of these books, Sir.” “Oh, but surely we can get some of them down?” “Then you’ll have to dump those boots, Sir, and that blanket. Can’t take the lot, Sir.” It was no use to argue with him. The batman’s orders are far more law than a mandate from Brigade. The Brigadier is merely content to issue orders; batmen see that theirs are carried out. There was nothing for it but to dump the books, and I looked sadly at the considerable collection that the mails of the last fourteen days had brought. “Have they all got to go?” {4} {5} {6} {7} {8} {9} “’Fraid so, Sir.” “What, all my pretty chickens, at one fell swoop?” Private Warren eyed me stolidly. “Well, Sir, I might manage two, Sir, but no more.” I ran a pathetic eye over them. There were several I particularly wanted to save; there were two novels by Hardy, Robert Graves’s new book of Poems, Regiment of Women, a battered copy of La Terre, The Oxford Book of Verse, The Stucco House. After a moment’s hesitation, the last two were saved for further odysseys; there was just room in a spare pocket for Fairies and Fusiliers; the rest would have to stay to welcome the Teuton. At last all the equipment of a machine-gun section had been carted away. I took one turn round the dugouts to see that no incriminating document remained. The dugout looked hospitably clean; all the delicacies of handing over had been observed, but as there would be up one to receive the relieving party, manners demanded some sort of “Salve”; and so, tearing from a notebook a sheet of paper, I scrawled across it in large letters, CHEERIOH, and pinned it over the entrance of my deserted home. § 2 March 28th, 1918. Of course the limbers never turned up. For two months without the least inconvenience from German artillery they had come up to the ration dump every night, but on this particular night they felt sure it would arouse suspicions, and so a guide was sent instead. And in France there are only two sorts of guides. There is the guide who does not know the way and owns up to it, and there is the guide who does not know the way and pretends he does. There are no others. Luckily ours came under the former category. “You see, Sir, I’ve only bin from Headquarters once and that was by day, and I’m not too sure of the way.... I’ve only been ’ere once and that....” Which was a pretty clear sign that a compass bearing would be hardly less reliable. We dumped most of our spare kit in the river, and set off. It is wonderful how disorderly any movement of troops appears by night. Actually it was a most methodical withdrawal, but in its progress it looked pitifully like a rout. The road seemed littered with cast-off equipment, ammunition, packs and bombs; dumps were going up all round. Innumerable Highlanders had lost their companies; nobody seemed to know where he was going or to care particularly whether he ever arrived. A subsection of fifteen men straggled into an echelon formation covering as many yards. It appeared an absolute certainty that dawn and the Germans would find us still trailing helplessly along the road. At last, however, came the loved jingle of harness, and the sound of restive mules. We heaved packs and baggages on a limber, and more cheerfully resumed our odyssey. This cheerfulness considerably diminished when the section found that our new positions were two hundred yards from the road, and that a hundred boxes of S.A.A. had to be stacked in half an hour. But eventually peace was restored to Israel, and by the time that the morning broke, the section was fairly comfortably lodged in some disused German dugouts. There followed four very lazy days. The two subsections had been amalgamated, and with my section officer Evans, I spent most of the day working out elaborate barrage charts in case of a break through. Evans had recently been on a course at Camières where they had given him an enormous blue sheet which was warranted proof against geography. Evans regarded it as a sort of charm. “You see, with this,” he said, “you can get on to any target you like within thirty seconds.” And it was certainly an ingenious toy, but as far as we were concerned, it did not accelerate the conclusion of the war. It required a level table, numerous drawing-pins, carbon papers, faultless draughtsmanship and much else with which we were unequipped: finally, when occasion demanded we resorted to the obsolete method of aiming at the required target. Of the actual war little information was gleaned. The limber corporal brought each evening the account of wondrous sallies and excursions. Lens was purported to have fallen, and an enveloping attack was in progress further North. Lille was only a matter of days. And then on the night of the 27th there arrived the mail and papers of the preceding seven days. It came in an enormous burst of epistolary shrapnel. Personally I received thirty letters and five parcels. We sat up reading them till midnight, and then in a contented frame of mind we turned to the papers. It was a bit of a shock. We had hardly imagined that there was a war on any front except our own. We had expected to see headlines talking of nothing but the Fall of Bullecourt and our masterly evacuation of Monchy. We had expected to see our exploits extolled by Philip Gibbs; instead of that they filled a very insignificant corner. It was all Bapaume, Ham, Peronne. We were merely a false splash of a wave that already had gone home. It was a blow to our self-respect. There was also no news of any enveloping manœuvres round Lille. The Germans appeared to be doing all that. Evans looked across at me dolefully. “Do you think the men had better know anything about that?” he said. “Shouldn’t think so. By the way, when are we being relieved?” “The sooner the better. There is going to be a war on soon.” And the memory of the thirty letters and five parcels thinned. “Oh, well,” I said, “I’m going to bed.” My sleep did not last long. Within an hour Evans was shouting in my ear. “Hell of a strafe upstairs. I think they’re coming over.” And indeed there was a strafe. Verey lights were going up all along the front. Three dumps were hit in as many minutes, from the right came the continual crump of “minnies.” Luckily we were in the shelter between the barrage on the eighteen-pounders and the barrage on the front lines. The only shells that came disconcertingly close were those from one of our own heavies that was dropping {10} {11} {12} {13} {14} {15} {16} short, like a man out of breath. At seven o’clock the Germans came over, and by twelve we were being escorted to Berlin. Our actual engagement resembles so closely that of every other unfortunate during those sorry days that it deserves no detailed description. The only original incident came at about nine o’clock when I discovered the perfidy of the section cook. I had sent him down to fetch some breakfast, and he returned smoking triumphantly a gold-tipped cigarette that he could have obtained from only one source. Perhaps this is what those mean who maintain that in the moment of action one sees the naked truth of the human soul. At any rate it stripped Private Hawkins pretty effectively. No doubt this kleptomania had been a practice with him for a long time, and at this critical moment I suppose he saw no reason why he should conceal it: “much is forgiven to a man condemned.” He literally flaunted theft. “AT SEVEN O’CLOCK THE GERMANS CAME OVER.” [To face page 16. “Hawkins,” I said quietly, “you’ll go back to the gun-team to-morrow. We’ll find another cook.” “Very good, Sir.” And almost instantly the order was given a divine confirmation in the form of the cushiest of flesh wounds in Private Hawkins’s right arm. After a second’s gasp he bounded down the trench. “A blighty, Sir,” he cried, “a blighty. No, Sir, don’t want to be bound up or anything. They’ll do that at the dressing station. I’m orf.” Visions had risen before him of white sheets and whiter nurses. He saw himself being petted and made much of, the hero of the village; and as the Germans slowly filtered round the flank, Private Hawkins rushed down the communication trench, resolved to put at all cost the dressing station between them and him. He succeeded. Probably it was the one time he had ever tried to do anything in his life. CHAPTER II ON THE WAY TO THE RHINE § 1 At the back of the mind there always exists a sort of unconscious conception of the various contingencies that may lie round the corner. It is usually unformulated, but it is there none the less, and at the moment when I was captured I had a very real if confused idea of what was going to happen to me. The idea was naturally confused because the etiquette of surrender is not included in Field Service Regulations, and as it is not with that intention that one originally sets out for France, the matter had not bulked largely in the imagination. But the terrorist had supplied these deficiencies, and he had made it hard to rid oneself of the supposition that one had only to cross a few yards of unowned hollows to find oneself in a world of new values and formulæ. As a dim recollection of some previous existence I had carried the image of strange brutalities and assaults, of callous, domineering Prussians, of Brigadiers with Sadistic temperament. I was fully prepared to be relieved of my watch and cigarette-case, and to be prodded in the back by my escort’s bayonet. Instead of that, however, he presented me with a cigar and pretended to understand my French, which is on the whole the most insidious of all forms of compliment. There was also a complete absence of that machine-perfect discipline of which we had heard so much. Several of the German officers had not shaved, men stood to the salute with their heels wide apart, and the arrival of a silver epaulette was not the sign for any Oriental prostrations. Beyond the fact that the men wore grey uniforms and smoked ungainly pipes, they strangely resembled an English battalion that was carrying on a minor local engagement. The authorities who interviewed us and confiscated our correspondence displayed the characteristic magnanimity of the captor; {17} {18} {19} {20} after enlarging on the individual merits of the Entente soldier, they proceeded to explain why they themselves were winning the war. “It’s staff work that counts,” they said. “We’ve got unity of command; Hindenburg. You’ve got two generals, Haig and Foch.” Indeed, everywhere behind the line there was intense gratification, but not so much of the victory-lust that must have inflamed them in the early months of the war, but of the weariness that four years had brought, and of the thought that the close of so much misery was near. Actual successes (so it appeared) were only the means to an end—it was peace that mattered. All this was very different from what I had expected. On the way to Battalion Headquarters I had visioned an inquisitional cross- examination. I had expected to be questioned by some fierce-jawed general, who would demand the secrets of the General Staff, which I should heroically refuse. Then he would call for the thumbscrew and the rack, for the cat-o’-nine-tails and the red-hot iron. “Will you speak now?” he would hiss. But I should remain as ever steadfastly loyal. The entire scenic panorama of the Private of the Buffs had swept before my eye; only a spasm of optimism had changed the crisis. Just at the moment when I was being led out to be shot, the general would suddenly relent. His voice would shake, and a quiver would run down his massive frame. “No, no!” he would say, with out-stretched hand. “Spare him! He’s only a boy, and besides he’s a soldier and, damn it! that’s all that I am myself.” Actuality, however, refused to reflect the Lyceum stage. The man with the records viewed my presence with complete equanimity. “Oh, well,” he said, “it’s no good my asking you any questions. You’d be sure to answer them wrong, and besides, I don’t think you could tell me so very much. Let’s see, you’re in the —— Division, aren’t you? Well, you’ve got the following battalions with you.” And he proceeded to give gratuitous information on the most intricate points of organisation and establishment, all the hundred and one little things that had been so laboriously tabulated before the Sandhurst exams., and had afterwards been so speedily forgotten. He knew the number of stretcher-bearers in a battalion, the number of G.S. wagons at brigade, and the quantity of red tabs at division. Any one possessing a quarter of his knowledge could have had a staff appointment for the asking. “Not bad,” he laughed. It was now two o’clock in the afternoon, and since the barrage had opened at three in the morning, none of us had sat down for a moment. We began to entertain hopes of lunch. “Where are we bound for?” I asked. “Douai.” “But we don’t march there to-day, do we?” “If you can,” he said cheerfully. “But it’s about twenty kilos, and by the time you’ve got to Vitry you probably won’t be sorry to have a rest.” The prospect of a twenty-kilometre march along the unspeakable French roads was anything but encouraging. It was drizzling slightly, and there seemed no likelihood of getting any food. In a sad silence we waited, while the scattered groups of prisoners were collected into a party sufficiently large to be moved off together. Proceedings were at this point considerably delayed by a company sergeant-major of the Blankshires who had spent his last moments of liberty near the rum jar; and under its influence he could not rid himself of the idea that he was still in charge of a parade. Nothing would induce him to fall in in the ranks. He persisted in standing on a bank, from which he directed operations in bucolic spasms, meanwhile treating the Germans with the benevolent patronage that he had been wont to display before the newly-joined subaltern. It was the one flash of humour that that grey afternoon provided. At last enough stragglers had dribbled in, six officers and about a hundred and twenty men, and the march back began. Nothing could exceed the depression of that evening. The rain began to fall heavily, and through its dim sheets peered the mournful eyes of ruined villages. We marched in silence; Vis-en-Artois, Dury, Torquennes, one by one they were passed, the landmarks we had once picked out from the Monchy heights. A stage of exhaustion had been reached when movement became mechanical. For twelve hours we had had no food, and no rest for at least sixteen, and to this physical weariness was added the depression that the bleak French landscape never fails to evoke—the grey stretches of rolling ground unrelieved by colour; the dead- straight roads lined by tree-stumps, the broken homesteads; and to all this was again added the cumulative helplessness that the events of the day had roused; the knowledge of the ignominy of one’s position, and the uncertainty of what was to come. Gradually the succession of broken houses yielded to whole but deserted villages; and these woke even more the sense of loneliness, of nostalgia. Formerly, on the way back from the line, there was nothing so cheering as to see through the night the first signs of civilisation. Then they were to the imagination as kindly hands welcoming it back to the joys from which it had been exiled. But now the shadowy arms of a distant windmill only served to increase the feeling of banishment and separation. Behind us we could hear the dull roll of guns, we could see the flares of the Verey lights curving against the sky; and these seemed nearer happiness than the untouched barns. At last towards ten o’clock we reached Vitry and were herded into an open cage. The whole surface of it was a liquid slime, round which men were moving, trying to keep warm. Sleep there was impossible. But at any rate there was something to eat, a cup of coffee, a quarter of a loaf of bread. The German officer received us as a hotel-keeper receives guests for whom he has no beds. “I am very sorry, gentlemen,” he said; “but you’re only here for one night. But I think I might be able to find you a little room in the hut for the wounded.” And so tired were we that there was pleasure in the mere prospect of a roof; and on a floor covered with lousy straw we passed the night in snatches of sleep, disturbed every moment by the tossing of cramped limbs, and by the presence of muddy boots driven against one’s face, and brawny Highlanders sprawling across one’s chest. But in that state of exhaustion these troubles were remote— for a while at any rate we could be still; and in the waking moments there lay no venom even in the recurring thought that on the next morning we should have to begin our march afresh. {21} {22} {23} {24} {25} {26} {27} § 2 At Douai we spent four days of incorrigible prolixity in a small house behind the bank. There was absolutely nothing to do. We had no books: we could not write. There was no chess-board, and the only pack of cards was two aces short. All we could do was to sleep spasmodically, and try not to remember that we were hungry. It was an impossible task. There was nothing else to think about. There was no chance of forgetting how little we had had for breakfast. Slowly we dragged from meal to meal. For breakfast we got a cup of coffee made from chestnuts, and an eighth of a loaf of bread. For lunch there was a bowl of vegetable soup. For supper another cup of coffee, and another eighth of a loaf. Each morning there was an infinitesimal issue of jam. That comprised our entire ration. We also had nothing to smoke. There was nothing for it but to lie on our beds, with every road of thought leading to the same gate. One remembered the most minute details of dinners enjoyed on leave. A steaming array of visionary dishes passed continually before the eyes. One thought of the tins of unwanted bully stacked at the foot of dugouts. And for myself there was the bitter recollection of three untouched parcels that I had received on the eve of capture. “To think of it,” I said, “a whole haggis, two cakes, four tins of salmon!” “Appalling!” echoed the others. “And to think that the Jerrys have got it!” “Don’t talk about it, man; let’s forget.” But there was no escape. “As a perfume doth remain In the folds where it hath lain,” so lingered the thoughts of those untouched delicacies. The only interesting features of our day were the talks we had with one of the German interpreters. It was the first time that any of us had a chance of discovering their attitude towards the Entente, and it was interesting to see how closely their propaganda had followed our own lines. To our accounts of atrocities in Belgium, the Germans had retorted with stories about the Russian invasion of East Prussia. By them the employment of native troops against white men was represented as an offence against humanity as gross as the use of gas. Nothing, moreover, would shake their belief that France and Russia were the aggressors. To the interpreter it was a war of self- defence. There is no doubt that his faith in this was absolutely sincere. But what really touched him most closely was the propaganda of our Press. “Surely you cannot believe,” he said, “that we are an entire nation of barbarians? Whatever our quarrels, you surely ought to allow that we are human beings. If it had not been for your newspaper chiefs,” he added, “the war would have been over in 1916.” It was the one point on which he was really bitter. One morning we were standing in the courtyard, and a German orderly was chopping up wood for our fires. It was a bit cold, and to keep himself warm one of the officers went over to help him. The interpreter turned to the rest of us and said: “Now then, if your John Bull could get hold of a photograph of that, he’d print huge headlines, ‘Ill-treatment of British Officers. Made to chop up wood for German soldiers.’ ” It was at Douai that we discovered for the first time the German habit of putting dictaphones in prisoners’ rooms. Ours was attached to the electric light appliances and masqueraded as a switch wire. But if any one listened to our conversation, they can have heard very little to interest them, save perhaps sundry strings of unsavoury epithets preceding the word “Boche.” From Douai we moved to Marchiennes; half of the way by tram. Every time we stopped, French women crowded round us bringing cigarettes and tobacco. “It is not allowed,” said the German sergeant-major, “but I shall be blind.” Material comforts were even fewer at our new resting-place. There were eight of us and we were put in a large, draughty barn, with bed-boards covered with bracken that was unspeakably lousy. There were no rugs or blankets of any description, and the nights were miserably cold. The eight days we spent there were the worst of our whole captivity. The food, consisting mainly of a stew of bad fish and sauerkraut, was at times uneatable. Indeed, things would have gone very badly with us, had we not managed to make friends with one of our guard. He was very small and very grubby, and introduced himself to us one morning when the commandant was not about. “Me Alsacian,” he said. “English, French, kamarades. Prussians, ugh! nix.” From this basis of common sympathies negotiations proceeded as smoothly as linguistic difficulties permitted. He told us that, if we wanted food, the only way was to apply to the Maire. He himself would carry the letter. Two hours later he returned with a loaf of bread and a packet of lard. It seemed a banquet, and for the rest of our stay he brought us, if not a living, at any rate an existing ration, and on the day that we moved he even came on to the station carrying a sack of provisions. Our train journey provided an admirable example of official negligences. For officialdom is the same all the world over. In England it was like a game of “Old Maid”; and so it was here. To the commandant at Marchiennes eight prisoners were only so many cards to be got rid of as quickly as possible. As soon as they had been put in a train, and the requisite number of buff sheets dispatched, his job was at an end. What happened in the course of transmission mattered not at all. {28} {29} {30} {31} {32} {33} And so the eight of us, with two German sentries, were put in a train at Marchiennes at ten o’clock on a Monday morning. We had rations for one day, and we reached Karlsruhe, our destination, at 7 p.m. on the Thursday. In this respect our experience is that of every other prisoner that I have met; only we, by being a small party, fared better than most. First of all, in regard to our sentries. As there were so few of us, we soon managed to get on friendly terms with them. They were a delightful couple. One of them was medically unfit, and had never been in the trenches. He was mortally afraid of his own rifle, and at the first opportunity unloaded it. The responsibility of a live round in the breech was too great. The other was old and kindly, with the Iron Cross; and like all men who have seen war, loathed it thoroughly. “Englander and German,” he said, “trenches, ah, blutig; capout; here alles kameraden; krieg, nix mehr.” And at every station he tried to get food out of the authorities. He was not very successful. Only once, at Louvain, did he manage to raise some bully beef and bread, and if we had had to rely on official largess, we should have been very thin by the time we reached Karlsruhe. But luckily, through being a small party, we were able to benefit from the generosity of the Belgian civilians at a small village called Bout-Merveille, who showered on us bread and eggs and cigarettes. But for all that the journey was tedious beyond words. We were crowded in a third-class carriage, with unpadded seats. We had nothing to read. Wherever the train stopped at a siding it remained there for any period from four to seven hours; it did all its movement by night, and for at least ten hours of daylight presented us with a stationary landscape. It seemed as though it would never end. Nor did our arrival in Germany afford any diversion. Another traditional conception “went west.” We had all vaguely expected to receive some insult or brutality at the hands of the civilian population. But no old men spat on us, no hectic women attacked us with their hair-pins. Instead of that they regarded us with a friendly curiosity. “Cheer up!” one girl said to us. “The war’ll soon be over. You will be back in four months.” It was the same here as behind the line. Peace—nothing else mattered. The Germans had suffered so much personally that they had ceased to nourish the collective loyalties of world power and empire. They no longer wanted to conquer the world, they wanted to be at peace; and to this end their victories in the field seemed the shortest way. The short snatches of conversation that we had with civilians on Heidelberg Station were all in this key. Peace would come in four months. Beyond that they had no ambitions. They no longer shared the megalomania of their rulers. CHAPTER III KARLSRUHE AND MILTON HAYES After the discomforts of the trenches and the tedium of a fortnight’s travelling, Karlsruhe provided a delightful haven. Here all the material needs were satisfied; there was a Red Cross issue of tin foods three times a week: the beds were moderately comfortable, and one’s clothes could be disinfected: and there was a library. After a fortnight’s exile from books there is no joy comparable to the sight of a printed page. And in the evenings we were allowed out till eleven o’clock. There were big arc lamps under the trees, and in this romantic atmosphere the greater part of the camp lay out reading in deck chairs. It was easy then to cast a false glamour over imprisonment; to see in it a succession of harmonious days; a quiet backwater in which the mind was free to work. It was easy to bathe the emotions in the ordered periods of George Moore’s prose, and reflect that there “lay no troublous thing before.” It was the reaction natural after the turgid experiences of the last eight months, and it certainly made that one week at Karlsruhe lyrical with content. Karlsruhe was a distributing station through which all officer prisoners passed on their way to permanent camps. But there was always retained a small committee of officers to superintend the activities of this fluid community. There were officers to look after the issue of relief parcels, to run the library, to control general discipline. In charge of the Red Cross Committee was Tarrant. Fourteen months of captivity had not made much impression either on his cheerfulness or on his health. In fact he looked and felt so fit that it caused him some alarm. “I’m too well,” he said, “I’m thinking of trying a fast.” “He’s been saying that every day for the last month,” remarked Stone, his room companion. “Oh, no, old man, really,” protested Tarrant, “I’ve only been waiting for it to get a bit warmer.” After the wearisome discussions about the incidental aspects of the war, it was an enormous delight to meet two people to whom the events of the last year had been a matter chiefly of conjecture and report. “You will get awfully sick of all this, of course, after fourteen months,” said Tarrant, “but it’s really a capital place to get one’s ideas settled.” One is always extraordinarily polite to a person one meets for the first time. After three days the need for politeness goes. But on that first occasion the opinions of the other are treated with a laborious respect. Conversation takes a turn of, “Of course that’s quite true, but I must say that personally ...” and that was the way that Tarrant listened to my heresies on the first evening. Long before I had vanished from Karlsruhe, however, the respectful tone had degenerated into, “Won’t do, old man, won’t do,” and there have been times since, when I have emerged sadly tattered from some war of dialectic, that I have longed wistfully for those early days. The next afternoon Tarrant was in a chastened mood. “I’ve begun my fast,” he explained. “It was not so bad after breakfast. But by lunch time it got pretty awful, and by now....” “It gets better after the third day, I’m told,” Stone hazarded. “You know,” Tarrant went on, “before I began this fast, I made a whole pile of arguments in favour of it; but really at this moment, I can’t remember a single one.” “Shall I suggest a few?” said Stone. {34} {35} {36} {37} {38} {39} {40} “No, thanks.” However, the resolution held good, and for the space of five complete days he did not eat a morsel of food. The moment it was over he declared it to be a capital scheme, and recommended it to all his friends. It was at Karlsruhe that I met Milton Hayes. Off the stage he is in appearance very much like the remainder of humanity, but no one who has met him once could ever forget him. He is the one man who has accepted Popular Taste as a constant thing, has defined that thing, and found a theory on which to work. The majority of popular artists always adopt an attitude of, “Well, there must be something about my stuff, I don’t know what it is, a little trick, something that hits the popular fancy. I can’t explain it.” But Milton Hayes has his theory cut and dried. He has formed a vessel in which all his work can take shape. He has written two monologues, The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God, and The Whitest Man I Know, that have sold more than any other similar compositions, and he wrote them both, as it were, to scale. “The great thing,” he said, “is to appeal to the imagination. Don’t describe: suggest. All the best effects are got by placing the vital incident off the stage. Let your public imagine, don’t tell them anything; just strike chords. It’s no good describing a house; the person will always fix the scene in some spot that he himself knows. In as few words as possible you’ve got to recall that spot to him. He’ll do the rest.” About the “Green Eye” he made no pretence. He wove round it no air of mystery and cracker tinsel. “It took me five hours to write,” he said, “but I worked it all out first. I don’t say it’s real poetry; but it does what I set out to do. It appeals to the imagination. It starts off with colours, green and yellow, that at once introduce an atmosphere. Then India: well, every one’s got his idea of India; it’s a symbol. It conveys something very definite to the average mind. Then play on the susceptibilities. ‘His name was mad Karou’: you’ve got the whole man. The public will fill in the picture for you. And then the mystery parts; just leave enough unsaid to make paterfamilias pat himself on the back. ‘I’ve spotted it, he can’t do me. I’m up to that dodge; I know where he went’; and when you are at the end you come back to the point you started from. It carries people back. You’ve got a compact whole: and you touch the sense of pathos, ‘A broken-hearted woman tends the grave of mad Karou.’ They’ll weave a whole story round that woman’s life. Every man’s a novelist at heart. We all tell ourselves stories. And that’s what you’ve got to play on.” And that is where, I think, Milton Hayes’s greatness really lies. He thoroughly understands his audience; he can change places with each individual that is listening to him. He never has to try a thing on some one first to see whether it will go. He knows at once what will get over and what will not. One of the most amusing sketches he has done was a burlesque of a war-lecture made by a famous London journalist. He mimicked his subject completely, but where the real “punch” lay was in his analysis of the emotions of each individual and couple leaving the hall. He knew exactly what each one would make of it. One of his chief maxims, too, is that an actor must remember that he is performing not to individuals but to couples. “People don’t go to shows by themselves,” he said, “and you must remember that a thing that may sound silly to a man when he’s by himself sounds very different when he’s with his best girl. You’ve got to get that moment when a boy wants to squeeze the hand of the girl he’s sitting next, and the old married couple simper a bit, and think that after all they’ve not had such a bad time together. “And I dare say that is why a play like Romance seems so bad to the critic. He’s gone there by himself, when he should have gone there with a girl. Romance has got all the sure hits; it’s steeped in amber light. All the effects, the hidden singer, the one passion, the woman that never marries. But you must not go to a show like that by yourself.” What others have done unconsciously, Milton Hayes has done consciously. He knows exactly what he is doing, and in consequence relies less on chance than others of his profession, and if, as he promises, he takes to writing musical comedies after the war, there should be very little doubt of his success. The week at Karlsruhe passed very quickly, and very pleasantly, and I was thoroughly sorry to have to leave, especially as Tarrant and Stone were on the permanent Red Cross staff. The prospect of a new camp at Mainz offered hardly any attractions. There would be nothing there; no library, no sports outfits; we should have all the trouble of starting the machinery of a “lager.” Not one of us looked forward to it. CHAPTER IV THE HUNGRY DAYS § 1 The entrance of the Citadel Mainz was calculated to inspire the most profound gloom. An enormous gate swung open, revealing a black and cavernous passage. As soon as all were herded in, the gate shut behind us, and we were immersed in darkness. Then another gate at the end of the passage creaked back on unoiled hinges, and ushered us into our new home. That cobwebbed passage was like the neutral space between two worlds. It laid emphasis on captivity. Under the lens of the mendacious camera the entourage of the citadel presents a very pleasant aspect. The square looks bright and large, the rooms light and airy; from the top windows there is a delightful view of the Mainz steeples and of the Rhineland hills, and a fleeting glimpse can be caught of Heine’s bridge. But to the jaundiced eye of the Gefangener all this comeliness was illusion. In actual circumference the square measured about 400 yards, and it was too full of the ghosts of squad drill. On most of the walls were painted the head and shoulders of dummy targets, that a regiment of snipers had once used for rifle practice. The spirit of militarism {41} {42} {43} {44} {45} {46} {47} was strong; and however delightful the Rhine may look when photographed from the top-story window of a tall block, it is less arcadian when viewed through a screen of wire netting. The whole place was littered with sentries, and barbed wire. For not one moment could one imagine one was free. At times even a sort of claustrophobia would envelop one. The desire to move was imperative, and the tall avenue of chestnuts seemed to rise furiously, as though they were sentinels that would some day draw all things to themselves. Some of the rooms were, it is true, light and sunny. But the rooms in Block III were miserably dark. The windows were on a level with the ground on account of a moat that ran round the building, and in front a line of chestnuts shut out the sunlight. The rooms were long and narrow, with bars across the windows. At the end it was very often too dark to read; the window sill was the only place that provided enough light for a morning shave. From the outside and from the inside the block was like a dungeon, and the official photographs omitted to immortalise it. The routine of the camp was very simple. At eight o’clock in the morning breakfast, consisting of coffee, was brought to the rooms. At half-past nine there was a roll-call. At twelve midday there was lunch in the mess-rooms; at three in the afternoon coffee was brought round to the rooms; at six there was supper in the mess-rooms. At nine the doors of the block were closed; at nine-thirty there was an evening roll-call; at eleven lights went out. OUR DAILY ROLL. [To face page 48. But for two fortunate contingencies those early days would have been almost unendurable. One of them was the arrival from Karlsruhe of Tarrant and Stone. During our first week every evening brought a draft of new arrivals; and among one of the later of these appeared Tarrant and Stone, staggering beneath the accumulated kit of fourteen months’ imprisonment. The change contented them little. After the shelter and privacy of a room for two, it was no joke to be dumped into the publicity of a room of ten. The creature comforts were missing. Naturally we showered sympathy. But as a practical philosophy altruism is a sadly broken reed. The pleasure at the prospect of their company quite outweighed the inconvenience that its presence had caused to them; and, besides that, they brought with them no small part of a library. The bookless days were over now. No more should I have to spend a whole morning over the only volume in the room—The Book of Common Prayer. No more should I have to go to the most extreme lengths of subservience to borrow Freckles or The Rosary. The other piece of luck we had was in the weather. During the early days of May the square was bathed in a metallic heat; and as soon as roll-call was over a deck chair was pushed into the shade of a tree, where one could doze and read throughout the whole morning, and forget that one was hungry. For those were hungry days. Indeed it is hard not to make the first two months a mere chronicle of sauerkraut. I honestly believe that the Germans gave us as much food as they could, considering we were “useless mouths”: but it was precious little. After all it is one thing to be reduced to short rations by slow gradations, but it is a very different thing to be taken from the flesh-pots of France where one eats a great deal too much, to a vegetable diet that was not nearly sufficient. There was only one proper meal a day: lunch. We then got two plates of soup, three or four potatoes, and a spoonful or two of beetroot or cabbage. The effect lasted for three hours. Supper rarely provided potatoes; usually two plates of thin soup, and sauerkraut or barley porridge. In addition there was a fortnightly issue of sugar, a weekly issue of jam, and a bi-weekly issue of bread. On this last issue the Gefangener’s fate depended. Life simplified itself into an attempt to spread out a small loaf of bread over four days. It did not often succeed. On the first day one carefully marked out on the crust the limit at which each day’s plunderings must stop. The loaf was divided, first of all, into four equal parts, then each quarter was again marked out in divisions; so much for breakfast, so much for tea, so much for supper. It did not work. Each day removed its neighbour’s landmark. By the third day only a little edge of crust remained. It was demolished by tea- time, and nothing quite equalled the depression of the evening of that third day. The worst time was at eight o’clock. The effect of a slender supper had by then worn off, and there was the comforting reflection...