Benjamin Muse

“ The sun was scorching hot, and their faces were black with dust and perspiration as they bent over the big, relentless machine. The sole German on the scene, a fat sentry, was sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree, sipping a glass of beer! ”

“ He cut a dashing figure with the air of a champion in feats of arms—gained from combats with helpless prisoners—and a pair of polished spurs, a clanking sword and a fiercely up-turned mustache completed the picture. Every prisoner and German sprang to attention. ”

“ But who was Karl?
I soon had an opportunity of learning, for the boy August came in.
“Don’t you know,” he said winking. “That’s her beau!”
In due course Karl arrived, a smart young sergeant from a Dragoon regiment. He spent two days with us and though he was almost constantly with Miga, he frequently found time to joke with me about the mud on the Somme, soldiers’ fondness for beer, the capitalist bandits, et cetera; giving me a cigarette on each occasion. Like most soldiers from the front, he had less of the air of superiority toward prisoners of war than the civilians. ”

“ But I recognized the guard and my astonishment was removed. It was indeed Paul. “Good Paul,” as the Russians called him, a French-Alsatian, as well known to the habitues of the detention barracks as “Mad Alek” and as cordially loved as the latter was hated. He had contrived to stay in the prison camp since the outbreak of the war with the one object of smoothing the jagged edges of captivity for Allied prisoners. Neither daily abuses from his German comrades nor the constant risk of punishment for himself had deterred him. ”

“ Three times a day the old warden came in with a hunk of my bread, a slice of my bacon, and a cup of German coffee. It was a concession, he explained. I should have gotten only the coffee, but he had a son who had formerly worked in England! It was lavish fare for this prison at any rate, for several times every day one of the other prisoners appeared at the little peep-hole in my door and begged:
“Brot, Brot, Kamarad! Just a little crumb of Brot!”
I was not a little curious to learn what manner of men my comrades in misery were. ”

“ In arriving in camp I was fortunate enough to meet a friend, a Frenchman, with three years service in captivity and an ample stock of provisions. He “adopted” me. The fate of my eight hundred comrades, however, was pitiful. Finding practically nothing in the Help Committee’s stores and being as yet without help from England, they were forced to subsist on the German ration which was scarcely enough to keep a man on his feet. The usual results of hunger set in, and I saw these poor fellows sink into shabby, hungry, begging wanderers about the camp. ”

“ The hand of friendship was again to be extended to the Slavonic brethren, and all animosities inspired by the war were to be forgotten. Indeed, it severely pained the tender heart of the Germans that they had been compelled to kill so many Russians, and they fervently prayed that no misunderstanding would ever again arise between the great German and Russian races.
No reference was made to the treatment of the Russian prisoners, for—there it stood in the treaty—they were to be “repatriated with all possible speed!” ”

“ The one great pastime of the Mecklenburg peasants was arguing about the war with the prisoners. For us, it was impossible to avoid it. We were placed there for the amusement of the natives as well as for toil, and neither the utter ignorance of the subject on the part of the German nor the ignorance of the native tongue on the part of the prisoner furnished any immunity.
“England, nicht gut!” or “England kaput!” [6] was the usual challenge.
New prisoners often found their rebuttal limited to a simple, but vigorous, “Nay, nay, nay!” ”

“ I was not long, however, in discovering some English neighbors. They were in the Work Barrack, which adjoined ours, and to which we would be conducted after forty-eight hours of fasting.
I was lying down composing the tentative menu for One Grand Feast when I should be restored to freedom (as all men do when they are suffering from hunger) , when I heard a cheery voice:
“Any Engländer there?”
“Any Engländer there?” it came again.
“Yes, mate,” I shouted, and followed the voice to a knot-hole in the wall, “K. R. R.”
“I’m Australian. How’re you getting on? ”

“ I returned to my farm, resolved to submit to no more restrictions, if indeed to work at all. I could not help taunting my sentry and all my favorite enemies in the village (who had so long jeered at me) over Germany’s debacle. They had always regarded me as a “Smart Alek” and now I exasperated them delightfully. My relations with the sentry reached a climax one evening when he found me reading a newspaper by candle-light in the barn. ”

“ Many a man will remember him gratefully for a timely rescue from wretched, gnawing hunger, many a man owes his escape from a Komando, which would have been equivalent to a death sentence to him, and the despondent hearts which have been warmed by a friendly word and a handshake from Paul would be difficult to estimate.
We had the job of loading peat on the trucks behind the camp. After loading one truck, Paul, having explored the scene for official eyes in the meantime, put François on sentry. ”

“ Cut off from all outside help and with no government at home capable of protesting, they were absolutely at the mercy of their German masters. They were overworked and whipped or slashed or imprisoned whenever it pleased any particular German to do so. In the camps and on the big working Komandos, they begged, thieved, waited on the other prisoners for their food, or else—starved.
The repatriation clause keenly interested the Russians in Kossebade. The evening after the news came they gathered in joyous groups in the village square and sang songs and congratulated one another. ”

“ I learned further that we three were all the prisoners. The twenty-seven empty cells were a testimonial to the shattering effect of the war on “business.” My companions were serving a sentence of eight months for a robbery committed in the town.
“We don’t any of us belong to Mecklenburg,” observed the hunchback pleasantly. “You see, my mate’s an Austrian, I’m an East Prussian, and you’re an Engländer, so we’re sort of Kamaraden, aren’t we?” ”

“ Like faithful slaves in the small farmyards or like gangs of convicts on the big estates, they carried on constantly the work of the absent German men and tilled Germany’s [Pg 28] soil. With dull and hardened faces and uniforms stained and patched until Cossack was scarcely distinguishable from chasseur, they drudged wearily on.
I was arrested by an animated scene on the rye fields of a big estate. About thirty English, French, and Russian prisoners with a sprinkling of Polish girls were harvesting and threshing the rye. ”

“ The biscuits and jam and chocolate lay spread on the edge of my “hole,” and the canteen of tea-water over my boot-dubbin fire steadily refused to boil. I left the wounded sergeant to look over the top. The mass of running grey uniforms was now very near us. I could see the flags which they carried and hear the roar of “Hurrahs” between the bursting of shells. ”

“ My new custodian was a fat, easy-going German, whom I found possessed some of the most radical of revolutionary ideas, but like a vast number of his comrades, too apathetic to trouble about carrying them out. We passed a little display of wealth in the form of a smartly dressed gentleman, lady, child and poodle dog, strolling down the street.
“They’re the bandits!” said my guard, nudging me. “They eat the butter and eggs. ”

“ When I finally went up to my cell, I could still hear the disgusted voice of the hunchback:
“Aber, [13] they don’t run locomotives over rye fields, mein Lieber!” [14]
It was about noon of the fifth day and I was finishing the Book of Isaiah, when the guard came to take me away. My warden did not forget to exact a fee of six marks—being the amount of my hotel bill for the five days, at a mark a day, according to Gadebusch reckoning. ”

“ We have to fight on dry bread and potatoes!”
It was through him, too, that I first learned of Marshal Foch’s great offensive, though it was too young as yet to bring to us prisoners the Great Hope. We were seated in the corner of a Gastwirtschaft talking over glasses of wine (for which he paid) . The gramophone was playing: “Puppchen, du bist mein Augenschatz,” or the German “Tipperary.” ”

“ Besides such minor offences as putting the wrong harness on the horse and tying the cows in the wrong stalls, I spilled a sack of oats, broke a window-pane in the barn and buried a young turkey beneath a fork-full of manure—all in one day! At first Erna scolded sharply, but finding me quite hopeless, she seemed finally to give me up and simply trust to luck that I would leave the house standing and some of the stock alive at the [Pg 15] end of this “perfect day.” ”

“ The proposed return to Gadebusch had evidently fallen through. I completed the Hungerstraf and afterward spent a few extra days in the work barrack before the guard came to take me back to the farm. The ration in the work barrack differed from that in the Hungerstraf in that they mixed a few carrots and potatoes with the water and called it soup. At all events it was calculated to give us the stamina necessary for work. ”

“ We wept for ourselves in 1914, and afterwards we wept a lot for other chaps, but when one’s been in the midst of suffering men for three years, one learns to keep from thinking about it—or else one would go mad. ”

“ You will be sent back to the farm, and if you repeat this nonsense, I shall deal severely with you. On the other hand, you may be assured of good treatment until the end of the war—if you do your duty! ”

“ Sword, spurs, revolvers, harness, and mustache were all polished to the highest degree. Indeed he reminded me of a sort of Don Quixote as he glared fiercely from side to side and replied majestically [Pg 31] to the queries of the multitude in regard to my nationality with: “Engländer!”
In short, his pose suggested that unanswerable question: “Why should Germany tremble?” ”

“ Older prisoners with a greater flow of language would gallantly defend the name of old England in a tirade similar to the following:
“Deutschland kaput! England nicht kaput! England besser! Ja! Ja! Englische Soldaten kommen immer fester! ”

“ After breakfast we went out for a walk and visited the other prisoners in the village, especially the three other Englishmen, and the two old Frenchmen who had been in the village since ’14. The five Serbians formed a little group of their own and the Russians, some thirty-five in number, formed another. ”

“ Germany is beaten.
[16] Dead.
[17] Nothing.
[Pg 38]
CHAPTER XV
“Mad Alek” and “Good Paul”
In the future annals of the war, one Acting Sergeant Major, Alexander Schröder, chief of III Kompanie, Parchim Gefangenenlager, better known to the Englishmen as “Mad Alek,” deserves a large but ignominious chapter. His ludicrous air of blood-curdling bravado and his childish efforts to play the role of the Chocolate Soldier make him as laughable as his brutish cruelties made him an object of dread and hate to the thousands of prisoners who passed through his hands. ”

“ I was startled too, but finding him quite harmless, I bade him: “Guten Abend!” [10] and, laughing, walked on.
Everywhere through this farming country I saw prisoners of war at work, often more numerous than the German laborers. ”

“ I asked, anxious to see it through myself. “I want to be there and testify against him to his face.”
“I am sorry,” he apologized, “but this matter must be referred to the Soldatenrat. Your assailant will be arrested and the matter thoroughly investigated, but it will take time. ”