Title: Three Times and Out
Author: Mervin C. Simmons
Nellie L. McClung
Release date: July 11, 2004 [eBook #12880]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12880
Credits: Thanks to A Celebration of Women Writers
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/
for providing the source text.
When a young man whom I had not seen until that day came to see me in Edmonton, and told me he had a story which he thought was worth writing, and which he wanted me to write for him, I told him I could not undertake to do it for I was writing a story of my own, but that I could no doubt find some one who would do it for him.
Then he mentioned that he was a returned soldier, and had been for sixteen months a prisoner in Germany, and had made his escape—
That changed everything!
I asked him to come right in and tell me all about it—for like every one else I have friends in the prison-camps of Germany, boys whom I remember as little chaps in knickers playing with my children, boys I taught in country schools in Manitoba, boys whose parents are my friends. There are many of these whom we know to be prisoners, and there are some who have been listed as "missing," who we are still hoping against long odds may be prisoners!
I asked him many questions. How were they treated? Did they get enough to eat? Did they get their parcels? Were they very lonely? Did he by any chance know a boy from Vancouver called Wallen Gordon, who had been "Missing" since the 2d of June, 1916? Or Reg Black from Manitou? or Garnet Stewart from Winnipeg?
Unfortunately, he did not.
Then he began his story. Before he had gone far, I had determined to do all I could to get his story into print, for it seemed to me to be a story that should be written. It gives at least a partial answer to the anxious questionings that are in so many hearts. It tells us something of the fate of the brave fellows who have, temporarily, lost their freedom—to make our freedom secure!
Private Simmons is a close and accurate observer who sees clearly and talks well. He tells a straightforward, unadorned tale, every sentence of which is true, and convincing. I venture to hope that the reader may have as much pleasure in the reading of it as I had in the writing.
NELLIE L. McCLUNG
Edmonton, October 24, 1918
Contents
CHAPTER VIII. OFF FOR SWITZERLAND!
CHAPTER XI. THE STRAFE-BARRACK
CHAPTER XVI. THE INVISIBLE BROTHERHOOD
CHAPTER XVII. THE CELLS AT OLDENBUBG
CHAPTER XVIII. PARNEWINKEL CAMP
CHAPTER XIX. THE BLACKEST CHAPTER OF ALL
CHAPTER XXI. TRAVELLERS OF THE NIGHT
CHAPTER XXII. THE LONG ROAD TO FREEDOM
List of Illustrations
Officers' Quarters in a German Military Prison
Tom Bromley / in Red Cross Overcoat With Prison Number And Marked Sleeve
Two Pages from Private Simmons's Diary
Map Made by Private Simmons of the First Attempt
The Christmas Card Which the Giessen Prison Authorities Supplied to the Prisoners
Friedrichsfeld Prison-camp in Winter
Friedrichsfeld Prison-camp in Summer
"England has declared war on Germany!"
We were working on a pumphouse, on the Columbia River, at Trail, British Columbia, when these words were shouted at us from the door by the boss carpenter, who had come down from the smelter to tell us that the news had just come over the wire.
Every one stopped work, and for a full minute not a word was spoken. Then Hill, a British reservist who was my work-mate, laid down his hammer and put on his coat. There was neither haste nor excitement in his movements, but a settled conviction that gave me a queer feeling. I began to argue just where we had left off, for the prospect of war had been threshed out for the last two days with great thoroughness. "It will be settled," I said. "Nations cannot go to war now. It would be suicide, with all the modern methods of destruction. It will be settled by a war council—and all forgotten in a month."
Hill, who had argued so well a few minutes ago and told us all the reasons he had for expecting war with Germany, would not waste a word on me now. England was at war—and he was part of England's war machine.
"I am quitting, George," he said to the boss carpenter, as he pulled his cap down on his head and started up the bank.
That night he began to drill us in the skating-rink.
I worked on for about a week, but from the first I determined to go if any one went from Canada. I don't suppose it was all patriotism. Part of it was the love of adventure, and a desire to see the world; for though I was a steady-going carpenter chap, I had many dreams as I worked with hammer and saw, and one of them was that I would travel far and see how people lived in other countries. The thought of war had always been repellent to me, and many an argument I had had with the German baker in whose house I roomed, on the subject of compulsory military training for boys. He often pointed out a stoop-shouldered, hollow-chested boy who lived on the same street, and told me that if this boy had lived in Germany he would have walked straighter and developed a chest, instead of slouching through life the way he was doing. He and his wife and the grown-up daughter were devoted to their country, and often told us of how well the working-people were housed in Germany and the affairs of the country conducted.
But I think the war was as great a surprise to them as to us, and although the two women told us we were foolish to go to fight—it was no business of ours if England wanted to get into a row—it made no difference in our friendly relations, and the day we left Clara came to the station with a box of candy. I suppose if we had known as much then as we do now about German diplomacy, we shouldn't have eaten it, but we only knew then that Clara's candy was the best going, and so we ate it, and often wished for more.
I have since heard, however, of other Germans in Canada who knew more of their country's plans, and openly spoke of them. One of these, employed by the Government, told the people in the office where he worked that when Germany got hold of Canada, she would straighten out the crooked streets in our towns and not allow shacks to be built on the good streets, and would see to it that houses were not crowded together; and the strangest part of it is that the people to whom he spoke attached no importance whatever to his words until the war came and the German mysteriously disappeared.
I never really enlisted, for we had no recruiting meetings in Trail before I left. We went to the skating-rink the first night, about fifteen of us, and began to drill. Mr. Schofield, Member of the Provincial Parliament, and Hill were in charge, and tested our marksmanship as well. They graded us according to physical tests, marksmanship, and ability to pick up the drill, and I was quite pleased to find I was Number "One" on the list.
There was a young Italian boy named Adolph Milachi, whom we called "Joe," who came to drill the first night, and although he could not speak much English, he was determined to be a soldier. I do not know what grudge little Joe had against the Germans, whether it was just the love of adventure which urged him on, but he overruled all objections to his going and left with the others of us, on the last day of August.
I remember that trip through the mountains in that soft, hazy, beautiful August weather; the mountain-tops, white with snow, were wrapped about with purple mist which twisted and shifted as if never satisfied with their draping. The sheer rocks in the mountain-sides, washed by a recent rain, were streaked with dull reds and blues and yellows, like the old-fashioned rag carpet. The rivers whose banks we followed ran blue and green, and icy cold, darting sometimes so sharply under the track that it jerked one's neck to follow them; and then the stately evergreens marched always with us, like endless companies of soldiers or pilgrims wending their way to a favorite shrine.
When we awakened the second morning, and found ourselves on the wide prairie of Alberta, with its many harvest scenes and herds of cattle, and the gardens all in bloom, one of the boys said, waving his hand at a particularly handsome house set in a field of ripe wheat, "No wonder the Germans want it!"
My story really begins April 24, 1915. Up to that time it had been the usual one—the training in England, with all the excitement of week-end leave; the great kindness of English families whose friends in Canada had written to them about us, and who had forthwith sent us their invitations to visit them, which we did with the greatest pleasure, enjoying every minute spent in their beautiful houses; and then the greatest thrill of all—when we were ordered to France.
The 24th of April was a beautiful spring day of quivering sunshine, which made the soggy ground in the part of Belgium where I was fairly steam. The grass was green as plush, and along the front of the trenches, where it had not been trodden down, there were yellow buttercups and other little spring flowers whose names I did not know.
We had dug the trenches the day before, and the ground was so marshy and wet that water began to ooze in before we had dug more than three feet. Then we had gone on the other side and thrown up more dirt, to make a better parapet, and had carried sand-bags from an old artillery dug-out. Four strands of barbed wire were also put up in front of our trenches, as a sort of suggestion of barbed-wire entanglements, but we knew we had very little protection.
Early in the morning of the 24th, a German aeroplane flew low over our trench, so low that I could see the man quite plainly, and could easily have shot him, but we had orders not to fire—the object of these orders being that we must not give away our position.
The airman saw us, of course, for he looked right down at us, and dropped down white pencils of smoke to show the gunners where we were. That big gray beetle sailing serenely over us, boring us with his sharp eyes, and spying out our pitiful attempts at protection, is one of the most unpleasant feelings I have ever had. It gives me the shivers yet! And to think we had orders not to fire!
Being a sniper, I had a rifle fixed up with a telescopic sight, which gave me a fine view of what was going on, and in order not to lose the benefit of it, I cleaned out a place in a hedge, which was just in front of the part of the trench I was in, and in this way I could see what was happening, at least in my immediate vicinity.
We knew that the Algerians who were holding a trench to our left had given way and stampeded, as a result of a German gas attack on the night of April 22d. Not only had the front line broken, but, the panic spreading, all of them ran, in many cases leaving their rifles behind them. Three companies of our battalion had been hastily sent in to the gap caused by the flight of the Algerians. Afterwards I heard that our artillery had been hurriedly withdrawn so that it might not fall into the hands of the enemy; but we did not know that at the time, though we wondered, as the day went on, why we got no artillery support.
Before us, and about fifty yards away, were deserted farm buildings, through whose windows I had instructions to send shots at intervals, to discourage the enemy from putting in machine guns. To our right there were other farm buildings where the Colonel and Adjutant were stationed, and in the early morning I was sent there with a message from Captain Scudamore, to see why our ammunition had not come up.
I found there Colonel Hart McHarg, Major Odlum (now Brigadier-General Odlum), and the Adjutant in consultation, and thought they looked worried and anxious. However, they gave me a cheerful message for Captain Scudamore. It was very soon after that that Colonel Hart McHarg was killed.
The bombardment began at about nine o'clock in the morning, almost immediately after the airman's visit, and I could see the heavy shells bursting in the village at the cross-roads behind us. They were throwing the big shells there to prevent reinforcements from coming up. They evidently did not know, any more than we did, that there were none to come, the artillery having been withdrawn the night before.
Some of the big shells threw the dirt as high as the highest trees. When the shells began to fall in our part of the trench, I crouched as low as I could in the soggy earth, to escape the shrapnel bullets. Soon I got to know the sound of the battery that was dropping the shells on us, and so knew when to take cover. One of our boys to my left was hit by a pebble on the cheek, and, thinking he was wounded, he fell on the ground and called for a stretcher-bearer. When the stretcher-bearer came, he could find nothing but a scratch on his cheek, and all of us who were not too scared had a laugh, including the boy himself.
I think it was about one o'clock in the afternoon that the Germans broke through the trench on our right, where Major Bing-Hall was in command; and some of the survivors from that trench came over to ours. One of them ran right to where I was, and pushed through the hole I had made in the hedge, to get a shot at the enemy. I called to him to be careful, but some sniper evidently saw him, for in less than half a minute he was shot dead, and fell at my side.
An order to "retreat if necessary" had been received before this, but for some reason, which I have never been able to understand, was not put into effect until quite a while after being received. When the order came, we began to move down the trench as fast as we could, but as the trench was narrow and there were wounded and dead men in it, our progress was slow.
Soon I saw Robinson, Smith, and Ward climbing out of the trench and cutting across the field. This was, of course, dangerous, for we were in full view of the enemy, but it was becoming more and more evident that we were in a tight corner. So I climbed out, too, and ran across the open as fast as I could go with my equipment. I got just past the hedge when I was hit through the pocket of my coat. I thought I was wounded, for the blow was severe, but found out afterwards the bullet had just passed through my coat pocket.
I kept on going, but in a few seconds I got a bullet right through my shoulder. It entered below my arm at the back, and came out just below the shoulder-bone, making a clean hole right through.
I fell into a shallow shell-hole, which was just the size to take me in, and as I lay there, the possibility of capture first came to me. Up to that time I had never thought of it as a possible contingency; but now, as I lay wounded, the grave likelihood came home to me.
I scrambled to my feet, resolved to take any chances rather than be captured. I have an indistinct recollection of what happened for the next few minutes. I know I ran from shell-hole to shell-hole, obsessed with the one great fear—of being captured—and at last reached the reserve trench, in front. I fell over the parapet, among and indeed right on top of the men who were there, for the trench was packed full of soldiers, and then quickly gathered myself together and climbed out of the trench and crawled along on my stomach to the left, following the trench to avoid the bullets, which I knew were flying over me.
Soon I saw, looking down into the trench, some of the boys I knew, and I dropped in beside them. Then everything went from me. A great darkness arose up from somewhere and swallowed me! Then I had a delightful sensation of peace and warmth and general comfort. Darkness, the blackest, inkiest darkness, rolled over me in waves and hid me so well no Jack Johnson or Big Bertha could ever find me. I hadn't a care or a thought in the world. I was light as a feather, and these great strong waves of darkness carried me farther and farther away.
But they didn't carry me quite far enough, for a cry shot through me like a knife, and I was wide awake, looking up from the bottom of a muddy trench. And the cry that wakened me was sounding up and down the trench, "The Germans are coming!"
Sergeant Reid, who did not seem to realize how desperate the situation was, was asking Major Bing-Hall what he was going to do. But before any more could be said, the Germans were swarming over the trench. The officer in charge of them gave us a chance to surrender, which we did, and then it seemed like a hundred voices—harsh, horrible voices—called to us to come out of the trench. "Raus" is the word they use, pronounced "rouse."
This was the first German word I had heard, and I hated it. It is the word they use to a dog when they want him to go out, or to cattle they are chasing out of a field. It is used to mean either "Come out!"—or "Get out!" I hated it that day, and I hated it still more afterward.
There were about twenty of us altogether, and we climbed out of the trench without speaking. There was nothing to be said. It was all up with us.
It is strange how people act in a crisis. I mean, it is strange how quiet they are, and composed. We stood there on the top of the trench, without speaking, although I knew what had happened to us was bitterer far than to be shot. But there was not a word spoken. I remember noticing Fred McKelvey, when the German who stood in front of him told him to take off his equipment. Fred's manner was halting, and reluctant, and he said, as he laid down his rifle and unbuckled his cartridge bag, "This is the thing my father told me never to let happen."
Just then the German who stood by me said something to me, and pointed to my equipment, but I couldn't unfasten a buckle with my useless arm, so I asked him if he couldn't see I was wounded. He seemed to understand what I meant, and unbuckled my straps and took everything off me, very gently, too, and whipped out my bandage and was putting it on my shoulder with considerable skill, I thought, and certainly with a gentle hand—when the order came from their officer to move us on, for the shells were falling all around us.
Unfortunately for me, my guard did not come with us, nor did I ever see him again. One of the others reached over and took my knife, cutting the string as unconcernedly as if I wanted him to have it, and I remember that this one had a saw-bayonet on his gun, as murderous and cruel-looking a weapon as any one could imagine, and he had a face to match it, too. So in the first five minutes I saw the two kinds of Germans.
When we were out of the worst of the shell-fire, we stopped to rest, and, a great dizziness coming over me, I sat down with my head against a tree, and looked up at the trailing rags of clouds that drifted across the sky. It was then about four o'clock of as pleasant an afternoon as I can ever remember. But the calmness of the sky, with its deep blue distance, seemed to shrivel me up into nothing. The world was so bright, and blue, and—uncaring!
I may have fallen asleep for a few minutes, for I thought I heard McKelvey saying, "Dad always told me not to let this happen." Over and over again, I could hear this, but I don't know whether McKelvey had repeated it. My brain was like a phonograph that sticks at one word and says it over and over again until some one stops it.
I think it was Mudge, of Grand Forks, who came over to see how I was. His voice sounded thin and far away, and I didn't answer him. Then I felt him taking off my overcoat and finishing the bandaging that the German boy had begun.
Little Joe, the Italian boy, often told me afterwards how I looked at that time. "All same dead chicken not killed right and kep' long time."
Here those who were not so badly wounded were marched on, but there were ten of us so badly hit we had to go very slowly. Percy Weller, one of the boys from Trail who enlisted when I did, was with us, and when we began the march I was behind him and noticed three holes in the back of his coat; the middle one was a horrible one made by shrapnel. He staggered painfully, poor chap, and his left eye was gone!
We passed a dead Canadian Highlander, whose kilt had pitched forward when he fell, and seemed to be covering his face.
In the first village we came to, they halted us, and we saw it was a dressing-station. The village was in ruins—even the town pump had had its head blown off!—and broken glass, pieces of brick, and plaster littered the one narrow street. The dressing was done in a two-room building which may have been a store. The walls were discolored and cracked, and the windows broken.
On a stretcher in the corner there lay a Canadian Highlander, from whose wounds the blood dripped horribly and gathered in a red pool on the dusty floor. His eyes were glazed and his face was drawn with pain. He talked unceasingly, but without meaning. The only thing I remember hearing him say was, "It's no use, mother—it's no use!"
Weller was attended to before I was, and marched on. While I sat there on an old tin pail which I had turned up for this purpose, two German officers came in, whistling. They looked for a minute at the dying Highlander in the corner, and one of them went over to him. He saw at once that his case was hopeless, and gave a short whistle as you do when blowing away a thistledown, indicating that he would soon be gone. I remember thinking that this was the German estimate of human life.
He came to me and said, "Well, what have you got?"
I thought he referred to my wound, and said, "A shoulder wound." At which he laughed pleasantly and said, "I am not interested in your wound; that's the doctor's business." Then I saw what he meant; it was souvenirs he was after. So I gave him my collar badge, and in return he gave me a German coin, and went over to the doctor and said something about me, for he flipped his finger toward me.
My turn came at last. The doctor examined my pay-book as well as my wound. I had forty-five francs in it, and when he took it out, I thought it was gone for sure. However, he carefully counted it before me, drawing my attention to the amount, and then returned it to me.
After my wound had been examined and a tag put on me stating what sort of treatment I was to have, I was taken away with half a dozen others and led down a narrow stone stair to a basement. Here on the cement floor were piles of straw, and the place was heated. The walls were dirty and discolored. One of the few pleasant recollections of my life in Germany has been the feeling of drowsy content that wrapped me about when I lay down on a pile of straw in that dirty, rat-infested basement. I forgot that I was a prisoner, that I was badly winged, that I was hungry, thirsty, dirty, and tired. I forgot all about my wounded companions and the Canadian Highlander, and all the suffering of the world, and drifted sweetly out into the wide ocean of sleep.
Some time during the night—for it was still dark—I felt some one kicking my feet and calling me to get up, and all my trouble and misery came back with a rush. My shoulder began to ache just where it left off, but I was so hungry that the thought of getting something to eat sustained me. Surely, I thought, they are going to feed us!
We were herded along the narrow street, out into a wide road, where we found an open car which ran on light rails in the centre of the road. It was like the picnic trolley cars which run in our cities in the warm weather. There were wounded German soldiers huddled together, and we sat down among them, wherever we could find the room, but not a word was spoken. I don't know whether they noticed who we were or not—they had enough to think about, not to be concerned with us, for most of them were terribly wounded. The one I sat beside leaned his head against my good shoulder and sobbed as he breathed. I could not help but think of the irony of war that had brought us together. For all I knew, he may have been the machine gunner who had been the means of ripping my shoulder to pieces—and it may have been a bullet from my rifle which had torn its way along his leg which now hung useless. Even so, there was no hard feeling between us, and he was welcome to the support of my good shoulder!
Some time through the night—my watch was broken and I couldn't tell the time exactly—we came to another village and got off the car. A guard came and carried off my companion, but as I could walk, I was left to unload myself. The step was high, and as my shoulder was very stiff and sore, I hesitated about jumping down. A big German soldier saw me, understood what was wrong, and lifted me gently down.
It was then nearly morning, for the dawn was beginning to show in the sky, and we were taken to an old church, where we were told to lie down and go to sleep. It was miserably cold in the church, and my shoulder ached fearfully. I tried hard to sleep, but couldn't manage it, and walked up and down to keep warm. I couldn't help but think of the strange use the church—which had been the scene of so many pleasant gatherings—was being put to, and as I leaned against the wall and looked out of the window, I seemed to see the gay and light-hearted Belgian people who so recently had gathered there. Right here, I thought, the bashful boys had stood, waiting to walk home with the girls... just the way we did in British Columbia, where one church I know well stands almost covered with the fragrant pines...
I fell into a pleasant reverie then of sunny afternoons and dewy moonlit nights, when the sun had gone over the mountains, and the stars came out in hundreds. My dream then began to have in it the brightest-eyed girl in the world, who gave me such a smile one Sunday when she came out of church... that I just naturally found myself walking beside her.... She had on a pink suit and white shoes, and wore a long string of black beads...
Then somebody spoke to me, and a sudden chill seized me and sent me into a spasm of coughing, and the pain of my shoulder shot up into my head like a knife... and I was back—all right—to the ruined church in Belgium, a prisoner of war in the hands of the Germans!
The person who spoke to me was a German cavalry officer, who quite politely bade me good-morning and asked me how I felt. I told him I felt rotten. I was both hungry and thirsty—and dirty and homesick. He laughed at that, as if it were funny, and asked me where I came from. When I told him, he said, "You Canadians are terrible fools to fight with us when you don't have to. You'll be sick of it before you are through. Canada is a nice country, though," he went on; "I've been in British Columbia, too, in the Government employ there—they treated me fine—and my brother is there now, engineer in the Dunsmuir Collieries at Ladysmith. Great people—the Canadians!"
And he laughed again and said something in German to the officer who was with him.
When the sun came up and poured into the church, warming up its cold dreariness, I lay down and slept, for I had not nearly finished the sleep so comfortably begun in the basement the night before.
But in what seemed like three minutes, some one kicked my feet and called to me to get up. I got to my feet, still spurred by the hope of getting something to eat. Outside, all those who could walk were falling in, and I hastened to do the same. Our guards were mounted this time, and I noticed that their horses were small and in poor condition. We were soon out of the village and marching along a splendid road.
The day was bright and sunny, but a searching wind blew straight in our faces and made travelling difficult. It seemed to beat unmercifully on my sore shoulder, and I held my right wrist with my left hand, to keep the weight off my shoulder all I could.
I had not gone far when I began to grow weak and dizzy. The thirst was the worst; my tongue was dry and swollen, and it felt like a cocoa doormat. I could see rings of light wherever I looked, and the ground seemed to come up in waves. A guard who rode near me had a water-bottle beside him which dripped water. The cork was not in tight as it should have been, and the sight of these drops of water seemed to madden me. I begged him for a drink, and pointed to my parched tongue; but he refused, and rode ahead as if the sight of me annoyed him!
Ahead of us I could see the smoke of a large town, and I told myself over and over again that there would be lots of water there, and food and clean clothes, and in this way I kept myself alive until we reached Roulers.
Roulers is a good-sized town in West Flanders, of about thirty thousand population, much noted for its linen manufacture; and has a great church of St. Michael with a very high tower, which we could see for miles. But I do not remember much about the look of the town, for I could hardly drag my feet. It seemed as if every step would be my last. But I held on some way, until we reached the stopping-place, which happened to be an unused school. The men who had not been wounded had arrived several hours ahead of us.
When, at last, I sat down on one of the benches, the whole place seemed to float by me. Nothing would stand still. The sensation was like the water dizziness which makes one feel he is being rapidly propelled upstream. But after sitting awhile, it passed, and I began to recognize some of our fellows. Frost, of my own battalion, was there, and when I told him I had had nothing to eat since the early morning of the day before, he immediately produced a hardtack biscuit and scraped out the bottom of his jam tin. They had been served with a ration of war-bread, and several of the boys offered me a share of their scanty allowance, but the first mouthful was all I could take. It was sour, heavy, and stale.
The school pump had escaped the fate of the last pump I had seen, and was in good working order, and its asthmatic creaking as it brought up the stream of water was music in my ears. We went out in turns and drank like thirsty cattle. I drank until my jaws were stiff as if with mumps, and my ears ached, and in a few minutes my legs were tied in cramps.
While I was vainly trying to rub them out with my one good hand, Fred McKelvey came up and told me a sure cure for leg-cramp. It is to turn the toes up as far as possible, and straighten out the legs, and it worked a cure for me. He said he had taken the cramps out of his legs this way when he was in the water.
I remember some of the British Columbia boys who were there. Sergeants Potentier, George Fitz, and Mudge, of Grand Forks; Reid, Diplock, and Johnson, of Vancouver; Munroe and Wildblood, of Rossland; Keith, Palmer, Larkins, Scott, and Croak. Captain Scudamore, my Company Captain, came over to where I sat, and kindly inquired about my wounds. He wrote down my father's address, too, and said he would try to get a letter to him.
There was a house next door—quite a fine house with a neat paling and long, shuttered windows, at which the vines were beginning to grow. It looked to be in good condition, except that part of the verandah had been torn away. The shutters were closed on its long, graceful windows, giving it the appearance of a tall, stately woman in heavy mourning.
When we were at the pump, we heard a gentle tapping, and, looking up, we saw a very handsome dark-eyed Belgian woman at one of the windows. Instinctively we saluted, and quick as a flash she held a Union Jack against the pane!
A cheer broke from us involuntarily, and the guards sprang to attention, suspecting trouble. But the flag was gone as quickly as it came, and when we looked again, the shutters were closed and the deep, waiting silence had settled down once more on the stately house of shutters.
But to us it had become suddenly possessed of a living soul! The flash of those sad black eyes, as well as the glimpse of the flag, seemed to call to us to carry on! They typified to us exactly what we were fighting for!
After the little incident of the flag, it was wonderful how bright and happy we felt. Of course, I know, the ministrations of the pump helped, for we not only drank all we wanted, but most of the boys had a wash, too; but we just needed to be reminded once in awhile of what the real issues of the war were.
Later in the day, after we had been examined by another medical man, who dressed our wounds very skillfully, and gently, too, we came back to the school, and found there two heavily veiled Belgian women. They had bars of chocolate for us, for which we were very grateful. They were both in deep mourning, and seemed to have been women of high social position, but their faces were very pale and sad, and when they spoke their voices were reedy and broken, and their eyes were black pools of misery. Some of the boys afterwards told me that their daughters had been carried off by the Germans, and their husbands shot before their eyes.
I noticed the absence of children and young girls on the streets. There were only old men and women, it seemed, and the faces of these were sad beyond expression. There were no outbursts of grief; they seemed like people whose eyes were cried dry, but whose spirits were still unbroken.
Later in the day we were taken to the station, to take the train for the prison-camp at Giessen. Of course, they did not tell us where we were going. They did not squander information on us or satisfy our curiosity, if they could help it.
The station was full of people when we got there, and there seemed to be a great deal of eating done at the stations. This was more noticeable still in German stations, as I saw afterwards.
Our mode of travelling was by the regular prisoner train which had lately—quite lately—been occupied by horses. It had two small, dirty windows, and the floor was bare of everything but dirt. We were dumped into it—not like sardines, for they fit comfortably together, but more like cordwood that is thrown together without being piled. If we had not had arms or legs or heads, there would have been just room for our bodies, but as it was, everybody was in everybody's way, and as many of us were wounded, and all of us were tired and hungry, we were not very amiable with each other.
I tried to stand up, but the jolting of the car made me dizzy, and so I doubled up on the floor, and I don't know how many people sat on me. I remember one of the boys I knew, who was beside me on the floor, Fairy Strachan. He had a bad wound in his chest, given him by a dog of a German guard, who prodded him with a bayonet after he was captured, for no reason at all. Fortunately the bayonet struck a rib, and so the wound was not deep, but not having been dressed, it was very painful.
I could not sleep at all that night, for the air was stifling, and somebody's arm or foot or head was always bumping into me. I wonder if Robinson Crusoe ever remembered to be thankful for fresh air and room to stretch himself! We asked the guards for water, for we soon grew very thirsty, and when we stopped at a station, one of the boys, looking out, saw the guard coming with a pail of water, and cried out, "Here's water—boys!" The thought of a drink put new life in us, and we scrambled to our feet. It was water, all right, and plenty of it, but it was boiling hot and we could not drink it; and we could not tell from the look of opaque stupidity on the face of the guard whether he did it intentionally or not. He may have been a boiling-water-before-meals advocate. He looked balmy enough for anything!