Once a month we were privileged to attend the ancient Marienkirche, where a service modelled as nearly as might be on the English Church evensong was conducted by the German Lutheran pastor. The service, including the sermon, which only lasted three minutes—a model brevity for homilies—was sympathetic, simple, and not difficult to follow for anyone with a slight knowledge of German.
As not infrequently, I probably received most benefit and benediction from matters extraneous to the ritual. My ears would be assailed by the sharp, almost metallic, tapping upon the windows of the leaves of the elm tree outside, which may have sported thus to the winds of a century or more. My roving eyes sought the Last Supper uponthe reredos, whereon it was to be observed that one of the Twelve is handing a morsel to a dog, while the Disciple whom Jesus loved has his arm affectionately through that of his Master. The interior of the church is entirely white, with here and there a quickening and vivification in a note of red or blue or brown on the altar, the pulpit, and the organ.
After the service, I wandered up the old wooden stairs to the choir and organ loft, remarking the carven names and other havoc wrought by generations of choir boys, and, indeed, impressed with a sense that their roguish spirits were tripping up before me.
The organ is old. On the manual the sharps are in white, the naturals in black. The blowing arrangement consists of a succession of three movable beams, on which I had a glimpse of the old blower, like some ancient, dilapidated god chained to his task and making ascent of interminable flights of stairs. The organ had been stripped of all but the very smallest of its metal pipes for the making of munitions; doubtless they have gone hurtling through the air todeeper diapasons than they ever sounded here!
In the ambulatory is an ancient and crude wooden Calvary; a great tributary box “Für die Armen,” much bestudded with nails, and dating from Luther’s day; also cases with medals of Beeskow men who have fought for the Fatherland from the Napoleonic Wars onward. In the pulpit is a quaint old hour-glass of four glasses; in the vestry a church clock centuries old.
As we returned from one of these services the interpreter—the third in succession—told me that as a young man he set out to adventure to Iceland. He got as far as Swinemunde, when he met a young lady, and so, as he said, “I got engaged instead.” “Such things happen,” he added reflectively. I could only express the hope that never since had he got into such hot water as he might have experienced at the Geysers! The interpreter’s wife, by the way, was Madame Reinl, who has sung at Covent Garden in such parts as Isolde, and who for a number of years was aprima donnain Berlin.
The Sunday after the signing of the Armistice a score of us attended morning service. We had seats in one of the galleries facing the pulpit, so that we could participate without being too conspicuously present. As it was, the congregation evinced no undue curiosity, though the three or four choir boys in the organ loft seemed to accept us gratefully as something of a spectacle for the enlivening of a dull day.
The congregation was very sparse, and consisted mostly of elderly women, sombre, sorrowful, almost emblematic figures; sad-faced, black clad, lonely. The vast white interior seemed cold—was cold, so that the organist, in his high latitudes, kept on his coat, with the collar upturned, and during the sermon made excursion among the architecture of the instrument. The pastor looked ill and depressed, and, with obviously a sad heart, he commenced his discourse, “This has been a heavy week for the Fatherland.”
On the following Sunday was held theyearly service for the dead. There were six or seven hundred people present, again mostly women, and again all in black. Many of them wept silently throughout the service, others gave way now and again to audible outbursts of grief. I could only see one living German soldier, but who shall say the spirits of how many dead were there?
SERVICE FOR THE DEAD
SERVICE FOR THE DEAD
SERVICE FOR THE DEAD
In our walks abroad we have frequently passed a humble little chapel, which has been built for the numerous Poles who work on the farms in the neighbourhood. One Sunday forenoon in October, when hints and hopes of peace were in the air, I accompanied the padre and the Roman Catholic party in camp to this chapel, and was witness of a very interesting and picturesque baptismal ceremony.
The low-roofed room with its humble altar at one end, its walls hung with the stations of the cross, and perforated with windows showing the golden dying gloriesof the trees, was crowded with these rural folks. The women and girls were wearing quaint and brightly-coloured skirts and head-dresses showing pathetic effort after fashion and fitness of attire for the occasion. A virile femininity this, obviously built for child-bearing. In fact, most of the women seem to be in an interesting condition, and the officiating priest has no fewer than five infants to baptize. From these bundles of babyhood, which look like white bolsters tied with brightly-coloured ribands, comes a continuous, but not too vehement, crying, which, even to my not unsympathetic ear, seems something similar to the squealing of little pigs.
Three women stand up, supported by their lawful lords, ungainly, in unfamiliar Sunday garments, and diminutive beside their wives. Ever and anon one of the women performs mystery and miracle with her fingers in the mouth of her offspring to the temporary appeasing of its rage.
The remaining two women, who are seated, are in deep black, and their husbands are not forthcoming. When their turnarrives, and they too stand before the priest, there is something peculiarly pathetic in the unconscious crying of these posthumous infants whose fathers have doubtless fallen, just as I can behold the leaves falling from the trees outwith the windows.
These humble folk, many of them, would desire to remain behind for our service, but the guard has received special instructions from the Commandant this morning, and the German soldiers turn them out. One elderly dame makes a spirited demand for admission, and, the soldier proving obdurate, she bides her time until his back is turned, then enters and falls upon her knees facing the altar as if defying him to turn her out.
The padre gives us a little homily on the approaching peace, with a further urging of that “Peace which the world cannot give.”
On the march back to ourLagerwe pass an ancient and dilapidated hackney-coach, open to display to an admiring world two of our mothers, with bundles tied with blue ribbon and red, in which the babies havebeen entirely buried out of sight against a biting wind.
OLD INN AT BEESKOW, NOW BURNED DOWN.
OLD INN AT BEESKOW, NOW BURNED DOWN.
OLD INN AT BEESKOW, NOW BURNED DOWN.
On the outskirts of Beeskow was a greatKaserneor barracks of the Garde-Feldartillerie-Regiments, from which in the morning we could sometimes hear the bugle sing reveille. This is not dissimilar to our own, and carries the same suggestion in it of the ascending sun. In those drearyand difficult days the same heavy and uneasy suggestion also, that it falls upon many ears as unwishful to hear it as they would the Last Trump on Judgment Morn.
Sometimes we would meet a company of German soldiers coming back from a route march or returning from the shooting range—a likely enough looking lot, marching stoutly and singing lustily. When theUnteroffiziersaw us he would give the order to march to attention, which was very smartly carried out. In walking through the town we were continually followed by the little children, who would clatter after us in their sabots, in manner reminiscent of the “Pied Piper of Hamelin,” making demand for “Kuchen.” They would even break into our ranks, and insinuate their hands into our tunic pockets in search of the biscuits which were sometimes tossed to them.
During a walk one afternoon we were overtaken by a sharp shower, and sought shelter under the trees around some cottages. A little girl watched us with a timid wonder,which ultimately gave place to half-confidence. The rain increasing in violence, the mother threw open her door in invitation, while she and the little girl retired to the kitchen, leaving us the lobby, in which we sheltered until the worst of the storm was over.
One day we met an aged woman bearing a burden of faggots through the forest. When she cast eyes on us she suddenly put her hand to her face and burst into bitter tears. One afternoon we passed an old road-mender, whose carefully built piles of stones had much of the order and durability of a wall, and on whose bent back was a tangible token of the passage of years as big as any of his boulders.
On another occasion when we walked to the tennis court the German Lieutenant’s wife was waiting for him at theGasthof, and the two partook of refreshment together at a little table under the trees. When we marched back we found that she was still accompanying him on the side-walk, which seemed to give to the whole parade a decidedly homely suggestion.
On Saturday afternoons we played football with the orderlies, when, in view of my advancing years and other discretions, I occasionally acted in the more retired position of full back. Pleasanter for me, however, was it to lie on my back in the forest, watching the young fir trees swaying to the wind like the masts of ships, while ever and anon they struck with a noise suggestive of the crossing of swords.
One of our orderlies, by the way, had been captured at Mons, and was a typical soldier of the period. He and his mate were lying in a ditch, up to the middle in mud and water, and under heavy fire. “I says to him, ‘Put a little artificial flower on me grave—I’m fond o’ roses myself.’” His teeth were knocked out by the butt of a soldier’s rifle, and he was flung into a church. When he first saw a loaf he “charged it,” toothless gums and all. He is still in the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” attitude towards his enemies. And he has lost practically a whole set!
Another orderly, who had recently been on commando, showed me his leg, whichwas badly scalded. “That’s the sort of thing we do, sir,” he said, “to prevent being sent down the mines!”
“IN SINCE MONS!”
“IN SINCE MONS!”
“IN SINCE MONS!”
KIRCHESTRASSE, BEESKOW.One of many such sketches made freely in the streets after the Armistice.
KIRCHESTRASSE, BEESKOW.One of many such sketches made freely in the streets after the Armistice.
KIRCHESTRASSE, BEESKOW.One of many such sketches made freely in the streets after the Armistice.