A few days after I reached Bochum an old soldier, one of the Diehards of that ‘contemptible little army’, was allowed to come and see me, but for some inexplicable reason his visits were immediately forbidden. It was a long time before I again saw or talked with any of my countrymen, through there were many of them in the hospital. One of the first visitors was a ‘Tommy’, an English lad, and I was deeply touched when, after his departure, I found upon the table a few marks which he had carelessly left behind, a very delicate and gentlemanly way of doing it. The first happy days I knew in captivity were when he was allowed to come to my room, where he washed, fed and looked after me like a brother.
Before leaving he brought a Belgian, who proved an equally good and constant friend. I shall never forget him. Originally he must have been a very fine type of physical manhood, almost perfection. In the first burst of the war he had been clubbed on the head with a rifle, and was still occasionally ‘queer’. He hated the Bosche, and with reason, for his own family had been amongst the thousands of victims of their brutality. With tears in his eyes he told me that his brother’s little girl, a child of twelve years, had been outraged by German soldiers. His wife was in occupied territory starving, his home had been destroyed, others of his relations murdered, but it was the tragedy of little Joan that drove him to fury. Should any of those insufferable beasts and assassins come in the big Belge’s way there will, I feel sure, to be a stern account taken. He had then been a prisoner of war for about twenty months, eight of which he had spent in gaol for refusing to work in an ammunition factory. He had been in hospital some weeks before I met him, and was suffering from a badly scalded foot. Questioned as to the cause of it, he explained that, on refusing to work at munitions, a sentry with fixed bayonet was sent to force him, and in order to evade that duty he had deliberately turned a pot of boiling water over his own foot.
‘I won’t do it,’ he said emphatically. ‘Perhaps a bomb or a grenade that I am forced to make may kill my own comrades. If they make me go again I will cut three fingers off my right hand rather than help them win the war.’ And that I felt sure that he would do it.
Such instances were not at all uncommon, both amongst French and Belgian as well as our own prisoners, and I was especially impressed with the heroism of one French soldier. Being forced to labour in a munitions factory, which he knew was against the covenant; he picked up a heavy billet of wood, handed it to a comrade and, holding out his arm, showed him where to strike so that the arm might be fractured. His friend hesitated, but, with his arm still stretched out, the brave chap turned away his head and shouted, ‘Allez!’ The first blow failed in its purpose, and through screwed up with pain he again extended his arm with, ‘Encore allez!’ I often wondered whether my own countrymen even faintly realised the fight that these great-hearted men were still making for conscience sake, what hardships and privations they suffered for the cause to which they had given themselves to the last extremity. Here in German prisons were thousands of silent sufferers still fighting the cause of Justice and Humanity, though many who hear of such instances outside were puzzled, and saw nothing in it but a foolish obstinacy.
On two occasions Australian prisoners from a Lager close by were permitted to visit me under escort, and once again I was given proof that, though their bodies had been captured, their spirit had not surrendered.20 They were still fighting the Bosche with an ingenuity and determination which puzzled even while it exasperated him. Some of them were sent to sow a field with peas and beans, sentries being posted at one end of the plot. One man drew the drill, another followed closely, and apparently sowed the seed, a third covering it up. But not a single seed was dropped into the drill. The lot were dumped into a hold at the end of it, and when those peas grew it was the most amazing result in agriculture that a German farmer had ever known. The Hun is a good cultivator. His potato sets had been sprouted before they were handed to the prisoners, and, as they planted, every shoot was carefully snipped off. It was only when the peas came up that the Germans feared that the potatoes too might be a failure. It meant, of course, that the men were taken from the lighter work of the fields and sent to harder labour in coal mines. For trifling offences the usual punishment was being ‘stood to the wires’. In winter or summer, hail or sun, they were compelled to stand in the open strictly to the German ‘Attention’ with Hun sentries to see that no one relaxed a muscle. The penalty for doing so was being clubbed with the butt of a rifle. If it happened to be winter they were lightly clad; in summer they were forced to stand bareheaded and facing the sun. The punishment continued until the prisoner either yielded or collapsed— when upon recovery it was continued.
I was greatly ‘bucked up’ by the visit of my countrymen, who on every occasion brought me packets selected from their Red Cross parcels—food, cigarettes, toilet necessaries, underclothing, all the things that were so very much desired. For weeks I had been ravenous with hunger, but refused to ask a favour. So wasted was my body that whenever my bed was made an attendant held me with his arms extended so that my injured side might not touch him, and he was no strong man. Never were the Christmas gifts of Santa Claus to a child a greater joy than those kindly gifts to me. Even to be with the splendid chaps who brought them, to see them and talk to them again, was both a physical and mental tonic. They must have wondered often at the excited eagerness with which I rummaged the boxes, my exclamations of delight as tinned sausages, biscuits, jam, soap, cigarettes appeared in turn. They were surprised to find that I had been so badly treated. ‘We thought they gave officers more consideration,’ said a Corporal, ‘but we are better off than you.’ Not better off than they deserved to be, for theirs is the most trying job on service, and the sequel to it was working for the enemy in coal mines, sugar refineries and on the roads.
Having on one occasion mentioned to the surgeon my belief that a broken bone in the wound was causing much of the trouble, he said: ‘Pooh! You haven’t a broken bone in your body. You will be playing tennis in about three months.’ A few days later I saw the end of a bone splinter sticking out through the flesh, and feeling where my hip bone should have been could only find a hollow. ‘Tennis in three months’ was a playful form of German satire.
I was much worried by the fact that, as month after month passed, I heard nothing from home. Yet at Cambrai they had brought a card to me and held my hand while I signed the printed form: ‘I am a prisoner in German hands—wounded.’ Nearly four months passed before my people at home got that news. I had been ten months a prisoner before their first letter came.
Another Good Samaritan, as plucky as he had been unfortunate, who came to see me at Bochum was a young Scottish soldier. Poor fellow, he was in a bad way—had lost one foot through frost bite, while three toes were missing from the other foot, the heel bone of which had also decayed. He was able to get about fairly well on crutches, and coming every day brought me a share of each Red Cross parcel he received. As an example of ‘No Surrender’ his story is worth telling.
His battalion was on the Somme one night when a small detachment under a young officer were ordered to storm what was believed to be an isolated Hun post. They found it strongly defended and had a fierce fight. As long as their bombs lasted they held on against overpowering numbers. Their officer was wounded four times before he fell dead. Finally with only three men left alive, and each of them shot more than once, they decided to make a bolt for it. One was killed instantly, the others both brought down again wounded, but they got into shell holes and stayed there. It was the heart of winter, and they were soon crippled by the cold and frost bite. Their iron rations ran out. They ate grass, chewed their own papers, and so for eight days lived through intolerable suffering, only to be discovered and captured in the end by a German patrol. They were given hot coffee and sent at once to a German hospital where, with decent treatment, their feet might still have been saved. This poor chap was not done with suffering. Later both feet were amputated and he was finally repatriated. On leaving Bochum they took away his crutches, gave him a stick, hung his kit about his neck and ordered him to march. He was absolutely writhing, moaning in agony, but his brute captors only laughed and refused to allow any other prisoner to help him. Do you wonder that some of us who have seen and suffered these things until in time the agony and humiliation of it had burned into our very souls, have nothing to offer the Hun in future but a Hate as deadly as his own—no hand for him in the years to come, except in the form of a doubled fist!
Twice I was visited by padres, the first a fine type of a man who looked and spoke quite unlike a German, the second a typical Hun. Long afterwards, when I was able to sit in a chair, some Sisters of Mercy came and said that I must go to church—they would wheel me down. I had heard from French and Belgian prisoners that their services were just an appeal for the success of German arms, a plea for our downfall, and had no wish to say ‘Amen’ to such a prayer. For days the Sisters, none of whom could speak English, importuned me in French to go to their service. I felt that their purpose at least was genuine, and told them of my objections.
‘Do you want me to pray, Gott strafe England?’
‘No, no,’ they said. ‘All that is very wrong. This is just a Christian service, in which anyone may join.’
I hobbled down with the help of crutches, but was too weak to stand, and as no one wished apparently to make room for me, I had to come away or I would have fallen. If this is a fair sample of German piety it seemed to me lacking in some great principles of Christianity.
There were a few sisters about the hospital who attended chiefly to German wounded and had little to do with prisoners. Amongst the attendants were non-coms who occasionally came to my room, and one of whom was in a degree decent. He realised the seriousness of their economic position, and when there was no one to overhear admitted that almost everything was now ‘Ersatz’ (substitute). A cake of toilet soap, he explained, cost about six shillings. Pepper and salt were only for capitalists. He told a story of one German woman who had lost her bread card, and it took some time to replace it. She begged for bread for her children and was refused. Finally she stole a loaf, sent payment for it to the police and having divided the bread in four portions amongst her children, hanged herself to a rafter. Even then I realised that there was social unrest in Germany, a strong resentment against leaders who had brought them to such a pass, but I realised too the complete helplessness of any effective attempt at revolution.The civilian was too weak, too meek for anything like heroic reprisals, too completely overmastered by military method and power. The death rate, amongst the very old and very young especially, must have been abominable.
A boy was sometimes permitted to pass through the hospital selling picture post cards. He was only about twelve years of age and for the first time he played the game valiantly, ‘Hoch der Kaiser!’ and ‘Gott strafe England!’ being part of his routine. They had plenty of food, he explained, were quite happy and sure to beat England. One morning, just after I had got my first Red Cross food parcel—four months after I had been taken prisoner—he came into the room, and when he saw the food on my table his eyes opened wide in astonishment. There was no ‘Hoch der Kaiser!’ then. They were starving, he said—had nothing but soap and black bread. Would I sell him one tin of meat for his mother? One had to harden one’s heart then, the boy’s plea was so obviously genuine. With tears in his eyes he offered me every penny he possessed, but there was a principle which it would have been treason to ignore. Red Cross parcels were not yet being sent for the succour of those who had devastated the world, drenched Europe in blood.
It is hardly necessary to say here how beneficent the Red Cross attention to prisoners proved. It was their salvation, and because it saved German rations and made men fitter for work, the prisoners always got their parcels. There was at first some theft, but this was stopped when they placed armed guards in charge of the trains. One condition was that non-commissioned officers must always open and examine the parcels, and they had been so primed with news of the deprivation of the enemy that their wonderment over the contents of the parcel could not be concealed. The woollen clothing, especially the socks, puzzled them. One man, as he stretched a sock between his fingers said: ‘It’s wool all right.’
‘Oh yes, it’s wool,’ I remarked. ‘What is yours?’