Many and varied were the aims ascribed to the Boches when the news of the move from Crefeld, ordered in May, 1917, reached the ears of the prisoners.
We were divided into parties of varying sizes. My party was the strongest, consisting of four hundred officers and about seventy soldier-servants.
The greatest secrecy was displayed as to our destination by the Germans, and all sorts of places were mooted as possible by the prisoners themselves.
Shortly before we had heard the news of our impending departure, a strange thing happened. A battalion of young German soldiers marched into the German half of the camp, and very soon after their arrivalwe were astonished to see another line of sentries posted round the camp outside the barbed-wire fence.
These sentries were only twenty yards apart and were dressed in active service uniforms. In addition to these, machine guns were posted at each corner of the camp so as to command the roads running past it. These precautions were taken a day or so before May 1st, the day when the Social Democrats were to have labour demonstrations throughout Germany.
We were naturally extremely interested and wondered what was to happen.
These German soldiers were far from being on the best of terms with our old Landsturm men, who continued to carry out the usual guard duties as they had done previously.
Nothing else happened beyond the arrest of five civilian Germans who were hanging about the entrance to the prison. Why they were suddenly seized and flung intocells no one rightly knew, but we concluded that it had to do with these same May 1st demonstrations.
The preparations for the great exodus from the camp were full of comic and sometimes almost tragic incidents.
Some prisoners, who had taken the trouble to try to make their rooms comfortable when the camp became all English, were particularly savage over the move, and took care that nothing which they were unable to take away should be left to be sold again to another batch of prisoners at a later date. There was a considerable quantity of live stock of various kinds in the camp, and measures for the transportation of these furred and feathered belongings had to be undertaken. The rabbits had to have special boxes made for them so that they could be carried by hand.
These rabbits had been in existence some six months at Crefeld and were very prolific breeders. They provided many anexcellent meal for their owners and were objects of great interest, being watched by a small crowd of the prison inhabitants every day.
Quite a number of canaries, a dog or two and a cat, were also in the camp, and would have to be taken away by their owners.
We were told that our heavy baggage might in due course follow us to the new prison camps and that we could take one box each, which was to accompany us. Of course we all had accumulated much more stuff than would go into one box, and much grousing and desperate thinking was the result of this order.
The commandant promised to have our special boxes of tinned food sent on to us as soon as possible after our departure. Although many of us never expected to see the things again, he kept his promise, greatly to the delight of everyone. These food boxes arrived some three weeks after we had got to the new camp.
On the last evening at Crefeld, definite "move" orders were issued and our names were called by parties. I was detailed for No. 2 camp, which was to have over half the 750 officers at that time at Crefeld. Another party consisted approximately of three hundred officers, and the remaining fifty or so were distributed among two or three other new camps.
Owing to finding out that five or six officers were missing at the final roll-call, another nominal roll-call was ordered that evening in order to ascertain the names of those who were missing. The Crab was in charge of this roll-call, and he stood at the opening of a wire netting fence dividing two tennis courts, while the English officers answered their names and filed past him. Muddles very soon occurred, and what with officers who had already answered their names wandering back among the uncounted ones, so as to answer to the names of those missing, and the mistakes which naturallyoccur in calling over the names of 750 officers of another nationality, the Germans were bamboozled, and had no idea what they were doing. This roll-call was a fearfully slow one, and it became dark before two thirds of the officers had passed through the opening.
Now, of course, no certainty of keeping those counted from those uncounted could possibly be assured, unless a large number of soldiers were employed to prevent persons slipping from the counted crowd to the uncounted crowd. Accordingly a strong force of German soldiers was sent for, and for some reason or other they made matters worse instead of better.
This state of affairs continued for some time, until someone applied a match to an old broom found on a tennis court. It made an excellent torch and others quickly emulated his example. This was followed by a wild throwing about of these flaming missiles, and it not infrequently happenedthat one of them pitched extremely near a German soldier forming one of the cordon round us. This sport gave place to bonfires. In a moment some old benches were torn up and three or four fires started. This roused the Boches and they cleared the bonfire stokers away and proceeded to trample out the flames, amid the laughter of all the prisoners. The alarm was sounded on a bugle, and yet another small army of soldiers arrived on the scene, but they did not tackle the largest bonfire which burnt merrily on undisturbed.
It was a weird sight. The red flames lit up a wide area, in which the greater part of the prisoners were strolling about surrounded on all sides by German soldiers in field gray uniforms and carrying rifles. However, the whole affair was only due to over-boisterous spirits, and there was no bad feeling displayed towards the Germans, who very wisely did not interfere to any great extent. When the order to disperse to ourrooms was given the prisoners went off quietly enough and the whole affair died out without any trouble occurring. However, at times it had been touch and go, whether the Boches would fire at us.
The hour for parade next morning was extremely early, and we had to wait for hours before we eventually moved off. Prior to leaving the camp our personal baggage, which we were to carry by hand, had to be searched. A large number of young German officers andFeldwebelswere brought into the camp to carry out this task. They were quite civil and polite and got through their job fairly quickly.
My party was the first to move out of the camp. We then found we had to walk to the station, a mile or so away. It was now that many discovered what a quantity of baggage they had got with them. Everyone had been under the impression that we should go by trams to the station, and consequently had much more to carry thanthey would have had if a walk to the station had been expected.
It was an awful procession. Every fifty to a hundred yards the column had to halt while bags were changed to the other hand or bundles re-adjusted. We walked four abreast and on both sides of each four was a German soldier.
It was an absolute nightmare. Some prisoners threw some of their belongings away, and a few sat down unable to move a yard further without a rest. At last, after an absolutely agonising time, we reached the station. We were put in the carriages four at a time, with three to four German soldiers in each carriage with us. In my carriage there were four Germans, one of them an Unter-Offizier. The Germans appropriated the corner seats, to prevent us being near the doors. This of course allowed the four of us to play bridge in the middle of the carriage.
Eventually the train moved out of thestation and we saw our last of Crefeld. Extraordinary as it may seem, we were positively annoyed at leaving; far from being keen on seeing new places and settling down in new environments, the majority would have preferred to remain in the same old groove for the whole term of their imprisonment. Time seems to go by much more quickly when nothing happens to mark its flight. The two and a half years spent in that prison had slipped by without milestones and it was extremely hard to realise what the two and a half years really meant. One sometimes felt that life previous to the war was really the invention of a dream. It often seemed to one that "prison" was the natural state of existence and anything outside of it unnatural. Perhaps the animals at the Zoo have the same impression of the outside world.
On settling down for our journey to that unknown destination, we had an opportunity of studying our guards. They were men ofabout thirty years of age and had all been to the front for long spells. For several hours they were very sulky and only answered our remarks and questions in monosyllables.
When we reached Essen they expanded a little in order to point out to us what a wonderful place it was. It certainly was wonderful. Miles of workshops and factories, and in many of them one could see guns, new, old, and damaged, lying about. The Germans in our carriage were evidently proud of this place and talked quite a lot about it, using many adjectives of the "kolossal," "wunderschön" type. We, of course, told them that we had hundreds of places in England of a similar nature and that they would one day see their wonderful Essen burnt to the ground. We thought naturally of air raids on Essen, and in view of the bombing of this place early in the war, we carefully examined it, and came to the conclusion that a bomb would be boundto hit something of importance there, so close together are the various workshops jammed.
At Gütersloh station we slowly passed a train conveying a German battalion towards the West front. We were able to examine the men well. This particular battalion consisted of very fine looking men, but there was no "Joy in the War" expression, as the German papers call it, on their faces, and they were not singing or shouting the incessant repertoire of the front-going German soldier. In fact they looked resigned to their fate, and took very little notice of us. Of course we talked to each other about "Kanonen Futter" for the benefit of the guards in our carriage.
On clearing out of Gütersloh we decided to have a meal. As we had prepared for two or three days in the train if necessary, we had plenty of food with us. It was with great curiosity that we covertly watched our German guards when we produced whitebread and tinned beef sent from England. It was evidently a great surprise for them, and they could not help showing their astonishment in their faces. It did not look to them as if England was starving if white bread could still be made, and as for the meat, they had not seen so much during a whole week as we each proposed to eat at one meal.
They had had a meal themselves just before we began ours, so we had been able to estimate what had been given them as their rations. It was very scanty and the small quantity of bread was exceedingly poor looking. In the hopes of getting them to talk a bit, we offered them some beef and a little bread. They accepted with alacrity and became friendly from that moment, telling us all sorts of things that interested us exceedingly.
Apparently, they in common with the majority of Germans, had mistrusted and even feared their English prisoners up tillthen. Very probably they had all been warned to be suspicious of us, and given to understand that we might overpower them at any moment and escape from the train. There must have been some such fear in the minds of the senior German officers, as there were machine guns on the train in addition to four hundred armed soldiers.
The under-officer told me that he had been wounded twice and been on the Russian front for a very long spell. He had also been on the West front in 1914, and I discovered that he had been in an attack on the very trenches occupied by my brigade near the Chemin des Dames on the Aisne. He had no hesitation in saying which was the nastiest front. He was absolutely fed up with the war, as were the others in the carriage. They asked us when we thought the war would end, and out of principle we said in a year to two years' time. I was often asked the same question while at Crefeld and always answered—"a year or more."This seemed to depress them and they used to blame England for being the cause of the war going on so long. Nearly every day I went to the canteen, and, according to my usual custom, talked to the German soldiers doing duty as salesmen there.
The war was always the subject of conversation and I generally asked them, laughingly, when the great promised defeat of England was going to come off. One day, one of them became quite serious and leant across the counter to me and said in a low tone so that only I could hear—"Germany will never defeat England." As an afterthought he added, "but England can never defeat Germany." I laughed and told him to wait.
It was extremely interesting to observe the gradual taming of the Boche.
In 1914 he was intoxicated with victories actual and prospective; 1915, confident but a little more calm; the big talk of capturing London, etc., had died down by then; 1916,general depression, and towards the end of the year actual and open fear for the future and hate of the war was to be observed among the soldiers and civilians of the lower orders.
By the Spring of 1917, real anxiety about the coming summer's fighting began to be evident, which was partially relieved by the events in Russia and the great promises and hopes held out to them by the submarine warfare.
Their behaviour towards us followed the same gradual scale. At first, bullying, truculent and brutal, they became more docile as time went on, until when we left Crefeld in May 1917, their behaviour was not so far removed from what one had a right to expect from prison guards and officials towards their officer prisoners.
Although the guards in our railway carriage had become quite friendly by now, they did not relax their vigilance, and it was quite evident that they would not sleep all at thesame time during the night which was approaching.
I watched very carefully that night, but never once did I catch them all unconscious at the same moment.
There can be no doubt whatever that they had had very stringent orders on the subject, owing probably to the escape of nine British officers from trains in the last three months.
The same watchfulness was displayed by the Germans throughout the train, as we found out on comparing notes afterwards.
The journey continued throughout the next day and we passed through Minden in the late afternoon.
We had now made up our minds that Stralsund, one of the rumoured destinations, was to be our new "home." Great was our surprise when we found that our train had stopped at a small town called Schwarmstedt, in Hanover, and that our new camp was some eight miles from there. The guardsgot out and formed a close cordon completely round the train and we were told that we were not to be marched off till daybreak. The German soldiers from our carriage not employed on this cordon duty fetched us water at our request and we settled down to sleep for a few hours until the time for moving came. We were turned out of the train at 3 a.m. and after being formed up in fours we waited for an hour or so.
We had a grand opportunity of studying the Prussian method of enforcing obedience and smartness in the men during this wait. A captain and a sergeant-major kind of man, fairly screamed at the privates. On several occasions, livid with rage, one or other of them rushed at some hapless wretch and roared at him in sentences containing very choice German words—hardly of the endearment variety.
Our carriage guards had previously told us that the major, captain and sergeant-major were "Schweine" of the worst type,but that the lieutenant was liked well enough. We could now judge for ourselves.
At last we got the order to move off, our hand baggage being left behind to be brought up by a miniature railway train especially constructed for the purpose of supplying the prison camps.
The camp with several others, as we found out afterwards, was situated on the Lüneburg Heide, some eight miles east-north-east of the town of Schwarmstedt and five or six miles on the Berlin side of the river Aller.
Crossing the river and leaving the valley through which it flowed, we quickly entered a wild tract of country, through which the only road was a rough cart track. The soil was peaty with a deep layer of sand and black dust on the top of it. For the first two or three miles we passed through several very fine pine forests interspersed with young plantations and rough scrub.
This type of country gave way to a flatmarshy-looking area covered with rank vegetation and stunted fir-trees. Streams and ditches cut up the land, and it struck one as being a very wet place even in the summer, in winter it would probably be a swamp.
At last we reached the camp and found ourselves looking at a collection of wooden huts with tarred felt roofs, surrounded by a barbed wire fence, seemingly planted at random in the midst of the wildness.
Our first sight of this camp hardly encouraged us to think that we were going to a better place than Crefeld. An ominous silence fell upon the incoming prisoners! And it was a particularly sulky lot who faced the new commandant when he had them formed up in front of him.
He admitted the bad state of the camp in his very first speech, and hoped that we would put up with it as he himself was powerless to alter matters.
On being dismissed, we went off to our rooms and very soon found out all about our new prison.
Imagine dirty sand, covering a layer of peat with water two feet underneath it, enclosed with a barbed wire fence. In thisarea put four long low wooden huts with tarred felt roofs, three much smaller ones, three pumps, a long latrine, a hospital hut and some cells, and you have the sum total of the buildings in the camp.
The three long low huts held 390 officers, each hut divided roughly into eight to ten rooms. Many of the rooms held sixteen officers, and so crowded were the beds in them that three pairs had to touch in many instances, despite repeated and varied ways of re-arrangement being tried.
The latrines were very close and handy, so much so in fact, that their ends came to within ten paces of the living-rooms at the end of two of the huts. As the latrines were never cleared out, the atmosphere in these near huts was something too appalling for words, especially if a west wind was blowing.
The drinking-water had been passed as fit for human beings by the German sanitary authorities. For all that, the majority ofus only drank tea and coffee, etc., requiring boiling water. The water was brownish and smelt abominably.
We became expert laundry hands, as we had to wash our own clothes, and so learnt the art from experience.
Many of the prisoners were able to see the comic side of life in this place fortunately, and so made the best of a bad job.
As the bath-house was outside of the wire fence, we could only get to it by going on parole, or by being marched out in groups. This naturally meant that the turn for baths did not come round too often. If one refused to give parole for this purpose, a bath could be got twice a week with luck.
The natural outcome of this was that everyone used to bath under the pumps which were situated between the living-huts. It was a common sight to see between twenty and thirty naked figures throwing water over each other round the pumps.
It was absolutely impossible to play tennis or football in this camp, as there was no space in which to do such things. The little ground lying between the living huts had been planted with vegetables by the Germans before our arrival. It was against all orders to walk across this ground. A Belgian private soldier, acting as officer's servant in the camp, did so once, and was banged into cells for his offence. No officer was put in cells for this, but that was not due to the lack of opportunity. I think the Germans did not want to cause trouble with their English officer prisoners, so refrained from rash acts of this nature.
As we had been allowed to take only one box with us from Crefeld, some officers had purchased huge baskets in the canteen into which they had crammed great quantities of luggage.
When these baskets were unpacked, the German authorities decided that they were too big to remain in the rooms and so orderedthat they should be removed from the camp to a store shed outside the wire fence.
Three officers availed themselves of this fact and hid themselves inside the baskets, arranging that strong English soldiers should carry them out, pretending that they were empty and put them with the other large boxes in the shed. Thus the officers would get outside the camp and eventually get away from the shed by night.
All went well at first. The baskets were outside the gate, and merrily moving off towards the shed, when the Boche officer called upon the soldiers to halt, and decided that as the soldiers were needed for other work the baskets were not to be put in the store room till after five o'clock. Down went the baskets on to the ground and were then massed near the German sentry on gate duty. As it was only two o'clock and fearfully hot, the wretched inhabitants of the baskets had a very poor time of it waiting till five.
One of the three did not keep still and we could see the wicker-work straining from his movements. Awful squeakings and scratchings came from this basket, and although we tried to drown the noise by talking and shouting near the gate, the German sentry must have heard something and became suspicious, as he stood by them and looked carefully at each in turn.
At last they were taken to the store. What really caused their recapture I don't know, but it appeared to be due to one of them showing himself at the window of the store-room some three hours later. They had to be careful to arrange it so that one of the baskets could be cut open from the inside, and the others could then be opened with the keys that the occupant of this basket had on him.
At about eight o'clock the German officer arrived, followed by a guard, went straight to the store-room and captured all three, who by this time had been out of theirbaskets for hours. We next saw them marched off to cells, where they were to do five months in solitary confinement.
We had not been thirty-six hours in this camp before three officers did get away. Crashing along a ditch, they cut the wire and got through the hole which was in the fence opposite the nearest clump of undergrowth to the camp.
How the Germans did not hear them crashing into these bushes I cannot conceive, as I myself heard them seventy or eighty yards away. These three were away about ten days before being caught. Not very long after their exit the German sentry noticed the hole in the wire and so that chance was spoilt for anyone else. The clump of bushes, which had been so useful to the three escapers, was cut down by order of the commandant, and after that a hundred yards of open clearing surrounded the wire fence, making a good field of fire for the sentries.
Owing to the sandy nature of the soil, which had all the dirt-causing propensities of coal dust and none of the advantages of clean sand, we had to be constantly washing our feet if they were to be kept clean at all. Many prisoners, realising what a lot of laundry work wearing socks in this dusty place meant, discarded their use altogether and simply wore football shorts and shoes, with an old shirt as top-wear.
Our rooms were perpetually in a filthy state. As soon as they were brushed, in came more of this sandy dust. A wind made life unbearable.
These conditions are those of summer, winter will mean a different tale. The open ditches, dry on account of the drought when I left, are hardly there as ornaments, but in all probability are filled to over-flowing with the surface water from the camp, when the rainy months come along.
At the end of the camp was a space wired off from the rest of the ground for the useof the soldier servants. There was a wooden hut similar to those occupied by the officers, which did duty for the housing of the men. In this wooden hut about 200 soldiers, of all kinds and descriptions, were packed—Russians, French, Belgians, and English, and not a few half-German half-Russian Jews.
These latter men were allowed great freedom by the Germans. There was no fear of them escaping, so they walked in and out of the camp whenever they wished to do so, as far as we could see. They were hardly trusted by the rest of the prisoners, who had good reason to know what useful sources of information these persons are to the German camp authorities.
I went to these quarters of our soldiers several times, although officers were not supposed to do so. But if no coat was worn, it was impossible for a German sentry to tell who was an officer or a private, so we used to adopt that plan if we wished to get into the enclosure.
The crowded state of that soldiers' hut was beyond belief. The beds were arranged as closely as possible, and then another layer fixed on to the tops of the ground floor ones.
For the first three weeks of our life in this camp, we had to live mainly on the rations provided by the German authorities, since many of us had not been able to bring much in the way of tinned food along with us when we left Crefeld. The parcels from England were also delayed in their arrival, as the organization arranged for Crefeld had to be altered for Schwarmstedt. The food provided by the Germans at a daily cost to each officer of 1 mark 50 pfenning, comprised the following:Breakfast, coffee, of the war variety, probably made with acorns.Dinner, soup, always containing lumps of mangel-wurzel, cabbage, black peas, and occasional pieces of potato. Twice or three times a week, tiny shreds of real meat could be discovered in the soup. There was oftena liberal ration of grit in this soup, but no extra charge was made on account of that.The Evening Meal, soup of the sago or meal variety, generally exceedingly thin.
In addition to these daily rations, we were each allowed to purchase two pounds of war bread per week at 60 pfs. This war bread was exceedingly nasty and doughy. If pressed with the finger the indentation remained, as it does in other putty-like substances.
Its color was a dark grey brown, and its smell and taste were sour. I understood that it was mainly made of potato. It is amusing to hear the talk about the English war bread in this country, to anyone who has experienced the same commodity in Germany.
The German war bread most certainly has violent effects on the interior economies of those who eat it for the first time, without becoming gradually trained to stand the strain of such an ordeal by eating the differentgrades of bread which have been given to the Fatherland during the last two years.
Personally I cannot justly complain, as I was one of the few who did not suffer from eating it.
It was a great day when the first consignment of re-directed parcels arrived. By standing in a queue for two hours the parcel could be obtained from the German censors. One of the first prisoners to draw his parcel came back with it under his arm, and a disgusted expression on his face. Nobody dared ask what he had got in his parcel, he looked too savage for the risk to be taken. However, it soon got about that he had got a dozen tennis balls! It was not surprising that he had looked like murder, when one realised that no tennis was possible in this camp, and that food was what he most wanted.
Fortunately our trials in this latter respect soon ended, as the parcels began to come in as regularly as they did at Crefeld. Inaddition the Crefeld commandant's promise, that the food boxes would be sent on, was fulfilled, and once more we had plenty of provisions. The soldiers also received their parcels now, and from what some of them said, they generally do wherever they are, thanks to the untiring energy of those who see to this for them in England.
One day we caught a specimen of the beasts which attacked us at night, and took it to the German officer pinned on a board. He made excuses and blamed the wooden huts, saying how impossible it was to deal with vermin. However, our room was to be fumigated. We were ordered to clear everything out of our room, and then the Germans arrived with a blow-flame with which to run over the bedsteads and clear out the cracks in the walls. Another German splashed creosote on to the floor, and places too high up to be reached by the blow flame.
We realized that this was all "eyewash," as the gaps between the partition wallsseparating the rooms were in some cases wide enough to allow the passage of one's hand. Therefore the many footed beasts of prey lurking in such places would easily avoid the strafing by going a few inches next door via these cracks. Of course the other rooms were not fumigated at the same time, so their preserves must have been entered by the game driven out of ours. We all wrote home for Keating's, but the letters never fetched up.
The censoring of our letters was done at a headquarter censor's office at Osnabrück, after our removal from Crefeld. This meant endless delay and often non-arrival of incoming letters, and practically a complete suspension of the outgoing mail.
The reason for this latter fact is not difficult to explain. Of course the prisoners described the new camp in these letters, and as the place was bad from every point of view, the contents of these epistles were not liked by the censors at Osnabrück.Consequently the letters were either burnt or kept. Of course the non-arrival of letters in England would do more to cause inquiries to be made at this end than anything else, but the Germans don't see things in that light.
This camp, Schwarmstedt, was known as No. 2, but why a number should be assigned and no name given to it, only a Boche could say; possibly it was because the Germans did not want it visited by any interfering inquisitive neutral country representative, since it was such a bad camp. I was pleased to hear that it was visited shortly after, and a full report made. I believe some of the grievances were attended to.
When we were at Crefeld some of us had taken up fencing as a form of exercise and amusement. The sabres and épées were sent out from England, but the Germans were very careful to take charge of them on their arrival, and used to let us have them at specific times, locking them up carefully at six o'clock every evening.
This care was continued for over a year, and then I suppose realising at last that as weapons with which to attack the camp-guards they were absolutely useless and that bed legs would be much more likely weapons if anyone wished to do such an absurd thing, they suddenly ignored the old fencing weapon and we were able each to have his own. When we moved from Crefeld, I took mine with me, tied quite openly on to a kit bag.
I hung it up in my room without thinking anything about it, until one day we were told that we were to be visited by a Boche General, and that everything had to be extremely tidy and in its correct place. As the authorities here were much more fussy persons than those at Crefeld, and the arriving general was rumoured a particularly aggressive England-hater, I thought that I had better hide my sabre, which I did almost entirely, only about three inches of it showing. Naturally I was a trifle worried about this compromising thing, as I hadnever realised before that it might get me into trouble in this new camp.
Whenever there was a search I had to hide it; in fact I got to dislike that sabre. I never got rid of it finally because I got rid of myself instead and left it behind as a legacy to my room companions. I hope they haven't claimed it and taken over its troublesome propensities.
At one end of the camp were three small huts known as machine-gun houses, constructed originally so as to command the three streets of the enclosure. In two of these the senior British officers lived, nine in a room.
The other one was the orderly room. In addition to these three houses, there were several machine-gun towers dotted at intervals outside but close up to the main wire fence of the camp.
These also must have been designed originally as points from which turbulent prisoners could be overawed. After a week or soof English occupation of this camp, one of them was cunningly used to give cover to an escaping party.
The exit from the camp was successful, but the actors in this drama were caught and brought back after several days away. The offending tower was promptly pulled down by the Germans and an extra sentry posted in its place.
Near the soldiers' quarters was the building assigned to "cells." I never saw the inside of them, but they were extremely small and hot in the summer. Officers in cells were marched out to the "bath" twice a week, and we could see them quite close, and sometimes even speak with them, while this was going on. They looked very white after a fortnight in these places, but that was due probably to the lack of sunlight. Each cell had a barred window about eight feet from the ground and occasionally we could see the faces of the occupants staring through the bars.
Another wooden hut did service as a hospital. This building was the best in the camp, being painted white on the inside and having quite a clean appearance. There were not many officer prisoners sick in this hospital when I left. Three or four bed cases was the total, on the average day.
Owing to the great heat, the rough grass and bog myrtle became extremely dry, and when a fire did break out it burnt merrily for a long time in the surrounding country.
On several occasions the flames swept down on the camp, and the German guards not on duty were turned out to prevent their too close approach to the wooden buildings.
Once a fire was only stopped ten yards short of the nearest hut.
The smoke was very thick and drove across the camp, obliterating it. Needless to say, some of us were watching the sentries very closely during this, but nobody got an opportunity of attacking the barbed wireperimeter by which we were enclosed. Rumour had it that a German village a few miles away had been wiped out by one of these fires. The German civilians of course blamed the prisoners, saying that they had caused these fires when smoking on parole-walks. The commandant then ordered no smoking except on roads, while we were out walking.
The German commandant of this camp full well realised what an extremely unpleasant place it was and how unsuited for the accommodation of officers or for private soldiers for that matter. Evidently ordered to make the best of a bad job, and told to try and smooth over the bad particulars of the camp by the skillful giving of small privileges, he attempted to get the prisoners interested in the building of a theatre and the making of playing-fields outside the camp.
A strong section of the prisoners fortunately hung together and declared themselves solidly against taking advantage of theseprivileges until such time as the really important questions, which had already been the subject of numerous complaints by the prisoners, should be attended to, and action for the general welfare of the camp population taken by the German authorities.
This camp was a miserable one if judged only from the details of existence there, but fortunately, as so often happens, there was a brighter side to it.
The uncomfortable and trying conditions made for unity and co-operation among the prisoners themselves. The humorous side of life seemed to come to the fore more easily than at the comparatively comfortable camp of Crefeld.
Cliques and factions existing during the previous two years at Crefeld were inclined to disappear, and a more general feeling of a common cause in the face of an unpleasant period steadily grew, closing the gaps in the ranks of the prisoners and tending to bring together people who wouldhardly bear to see each other under previous conditions.
It is surprising what a difference the effect of a long term of imprisonment has on various people. To anyone gifted with the smallest powers of observation, the constant changes and rapid transformation of ideas and standpoints in the small world of prison necessarily came with interest. It is a strange fact, but nevertheless true, that some prisoners, forgetting that a prison-existence is only temporary and entirely unnatural, seem to think that things matter in such a place, and that the happenings and views of the outside world do not directly concern them.
A long spell of such an existence changes a man more in character than the same period spent in the ordinary course of life. Some are tempered in the fires of such a test, while there are others....
It may be wondered why it is that so few British officers have succeeded in escaping from prison camps in Germany.
The Germans do not get very worried over the loss of a few private soldiers in that way, but they are very careful to prevent our officers from having too many chances of escape.
The men are taken out to work in the fields and woods, and as the Germans have by no means too many men to spare, they cannot send a very large escort with them. Consequently it not unfrequently happens that men are able to slip away into thick cover without the Boches seeing them orknowing of their absence until they count up their charges, maybe some hours later.
The officers on the other hand never leave the barbed-wire enclosure of the camps, unless on parole for walks, an arrangement countenanced by our War Office, so they have naturally greater difficulties to get over before commencing any dash for the frontier.
Many officers have tried and have had appallingly bad luck in numerous instances. Early in the spring of 1917 the Germans warned all officers and men that they would be liable to five months and three months solitary confinement in a cell respectively, if caught attempting to escape. This was as a reprisal for excessive sentences inflicted on their prisoners who attempted to escape in England, under the Defence of the Realm Regulations.
As the solitary confinement was automatic, and was given without trial, we were also warned that after undergoing it, a transgressor of this kind might be tried bycourt-martial for such offences as being in possession of civilian clothes, a compass, German money, or wire-cutters, etc. The charge was simple.... Disobedience of orders! For this another three or four months could be imposed. I was very glad to read in the papers that all this sort of thing had been done away with by that excellent Commission which went to the Hague to meet the German delegates in July, 1917. There were other great things done by that same Commission, and the prisoners who benefit thereby will be most grateful.
Of course it was natural that with this heavy sentence hanging over the heads of would-be escapers some thought twice before trying, but it is worth noting that since this German order was issued there have been more successful escapes and more attempts to escape by officers than in the whole previous period.
I spoke to some of our men when out ona parole walk. They were working on a wild piece of heath-land with very few Germans to guard them. I asked one whether any of them had tried to escape from there. He told me that very few had done so, as there was such a long way to go, and that when caught the men were put in the cells and were not allowed their parcels.
This meant three-quarters starvation, as the German food provided was bad and scanty.
Our camp, known as Schwarmstedt, although situated seven or eight miles from the small town of that name, was on the Lüneburg Heide, an expanse of marshy, waste ground, intersected by small streams and dotted with little woods and stunted pine trees.
There were other camps on the same stretch of country. The notorious Soltau lay some miles to the north of our camp. This district is some hundred and seventymiles from the Dutch frontier as the crow flies.
In preparing my escape, I had to calculate the quantity of food required to carry me through the journey. This would naturally be considerable as I could not reckon on doing more than an average of eight to twelve miles every twenty-four hours, as it was only safe to march by night and the hours of darkness at that time of the year were only about five and a half. Although the actual distance was a hundred and forty-five miles, allowances to be made for detours and an indirect line, as well as for delays occasioned by such large obstacles as broad rivers and smaller, but more formidable ones in the shape of German guards, would necessitate preparations for a greater distance.
The food required would have to be carried, so a bag was necessary.
I will not say how I got the bag or what kind it was, nor how I got my civilianclothes, for this is certain to be read by members of the thorough race whose prisoner I was, and naturally any hints I drop may be used against other prisoners.
What I say outright is all known to the Germans, or obvious to the veriest fool of a prison-camp commandant.
My costume consisted of a long white cotton coat and a pair of white cotton pants, both dyed a dirty light grey-brown with coffee. I had a cap also, but that too must remain a mystery.
As the cotton coat had no pockets and was very thin, I wore an old khaki coat underneath, which stood me in good stead when I had nearly got to the end of my journey. A pair of rubber-soled shoes, white once but made khaki-colour by my servant some time before, completed my kit.
Although I had naturally discussed matters with others in the camp in an indefinite way I had not arranged any collaboration in the scheme, by which I succeeded. I toldonly one friend ten minutes before I took the first steps in the carrying out of the plan.
When first we reached Schwarmstedt after our journey from Crefeld, there were several weak spots in the "ring" of precautions against escape which surrounded it. Within forty-eight hours of our arrival three officers got out of the camp.
They had very bad luck, being caught after eleven days' travel, about three-quarters of the way to the Dutch frontier. This loophole was of course closed to further attempts by the measures now adopted by the Boches.
However, two more got away from the camp not long afterwards and had the same atrocious luck after going about the same distance. Another individual attempt resulted in an officer getting out for some days before the same Nemesis overtook him, and he too was brought back.
About ten days before my escape, yet twomore got away, and were still unaccounted for when I left the camp. They must have had the same hard fate, as I heard nothing of them in Holland or England when I arrived. After each of these attempts the Germans discovered fresh weak spots, and the camp was rapidly becoming a stronger prison. One effect they had was to make the Germans employ more guards for the camp. Extra sentries were put on at several places, and every extra sentry means reliefs, and it takes six men at least to permanently provide one extra sentry.
These men might have been helping on the farms instead, so it is some small comfort to think that even a failure to escape can do some service to our country.
Of course when I left most of these unfortunates were back in the cells, beginning their five months' stretch of solitary confinement.
Anyone looking at the map of Germany will see immediately that from the LüneburgHeide, north of Hanover, one has to cross the following rivers before one can reach the Dutch frontier—the Aller, Leine, Weser, Hunte and Ems.
These are all fairly large. The Aller runs along the western limits of the Lüneburg Heide (Heath) and acts as a natural barrier around prison-camps situated to the east of it. When we first arrived at this camp, Schwarmstedt, the commandant had practically told us in so many words that we might get away from the camp, but that we should never cross the frontier. This meant that there was something which he knew of to be passed besides the camp guards and those at the frontier. Many of us promptly understood by his remarks that he had himself made arrangements for the guarding of the bridges over the rivers.
Another fact generally well-known to every one is this. All bridges over large important rivers are guarded in Germany, and even the railway bridges over many of the smallerones are provided with their ancient Landsturm men.
On our arrival the commandant of our camp had spoken at once to us in English, of which he knew a certain amount. We soon got to see how proud of this knowledge he was, as he would address all the English officers on some trifling subject every second day. Besides which he would summon the senior English officer before him and all those officers who had any particular department of the camp to look after, such as kitchens, parcels, games, practically every day. The language spoken was always English.
He was a fine-looking old man, covered with medals and iron crosses, a veteran of the 1866 and 1870 wars. He loved being saluted, and complained that the British did not salute him enough. He was told that our officers do not salute when they are not wearing hats, and that many had got no military caps since theirs had been takenfrom them by the Germans at the time of their capture.