Joseph Lee

“ Soldier (emphatically, to the men of the Medical Corps) : Away! away! I would die of life and not of death.... Let me lie down beside mine enemy, he that hath endured what I have endured, he, as a comrade that understands me.
Ahasuerus: Come, thou mayst deem thyself blest in that thou diest so that thou mayst not behold a race of lesser men. Ye have grown beyond human compass in the fires of your time, your heads would strike the ceilings in your little chambers. ”

“ One need not be in Abyssinia to be chained to a black mood at least, if not a black man. Sitting in the court at Carlsruhe, watching the barbed wire shake and shiver like a man in an ague to the play of my foot, I have been seized with a sudden fear of the horrors from which I have emerged. ”

“ Prior to the enactment, and for the benefit of those in the audience who might be innocent of French, a British officer gave out the motif in English.
As I sat contentedly in my place—the burden of the wearinesses of the last weeks fallen from my shoulders—it was borne in upon me that much of the success of a play is in the eager and receptive mood of the audience; also that in the naïve freshness [61] of an amateur performance is a charm which has too frequently perished in the more finished production of the professional actor. ”

“ We decide that if we go fasting during the morrow—a proceeding familiarity with which has rendered not too fearful—-we shall have purses sufficient to pay for a bed in the hotel, and our return fares to Beeskow.
We have been sitting meanwhile amid a cheerless concourse. The people enter, take their refreshment without any appearance of refreshing, and so depart. “See,” says a Russian, just released from Ruhleben, who has entered into conversation, “how they are dazed; how they are dreaming! All of Germany is as a great empty building!” ”

“ As the car speeds through the streets we rub the frost from the panes and gaze out upon the world like a batch of schoolboys on an excursion. Old Maier, the German orderly, indeed, takes particular pains to point out to us places and objects of interest as we pass; the Stadthaus; the monument to the Margrave Charles William, founder of the city, which encloses his dust; the various churches. The architecture is interesting, although, as I understand, we are moving through the least opulent parts of Carlsruhe. ”

“ St. Hedewick is a great circular cathedral, not without a certain impressiveness, particularly when crowded as it was on our arrival. The service was in progress, and from the great organ came a sound like a rushing mighty wind. When we emerged it was raining, and we decided to call as invited on our Russian friend of yesterday. We made our way to the address circuitously and laboriously, receiving direction—and misdirection—from a sailor sentry, who left his post and accompanied us for a ten-minutes’ march to put us on the proper car. ”

“ Dying Soldier: Do you not hear the thunder of Wieland’s hammer? The ringing armour of the Valkyries? Do you not hear the hoof-beats of their stallions?
Second Soldier: Yea, rivers and fields, mountains and woods dream anew their German dreams.... Silently the women offer up their beauty ... the park of roses becomes the potato patch. The savant is his own servant. The mother can no longer [79] mother her child. Work puts out the torch of love ... but all bear this ... they bear it for the sake of the blood which flowed for their sake.
Soldier: I die ... I die happy. ”

“ A gramophone is giving forth a military march with well-nigh the full power of a military band. The march finishes with “God Save the King,” and a number of the officers stand to attention. A drayman, who has been delivering stores to the Kantine, cracks his whip with a report like a revolver shot, until the sentry opens the gate, and he passes out. From one of the adjoining houses come flights of arpeggios from a piano well played.
One of my Italian friends, who, on the maternal side, is of Scottish descent, is learning English, with the very tender idea of “giving a surprise to Mother.” ”

“ We are all human. Warum ist der Krieg?” distressfully, and touching her forehead with her finger as if in despair of a solution. “Why is the war? Why? Why?”
I could not tell her.
On another occasion Tim and I footed it to the small town of Friedland, which at one time, apparently, has had a Jewish population. As we sat together in the dusk by the stove in the Gasthaus, there entered a German soldier obviously fresh—but as obviously fatigued—from the front. ”

“ Life at Carlsruhe Lager As we passed a sentry and turned in between high palisades heavily fortified by barbed wire, I had a feeling of disappointment, if not of dismay. I had hoped to live more closely to Nature, whereas Carlsruhe Camp lay in a central part of the town, and was overlooked at almost every point by high buildings, hotels, restaurants, and mansions. ”

“ SKETCH.
VIII
Beeskow Lager The journey from Carlsruhe, in Baden, to Beeskow in der Mark presented a marked contrast to the nightmare, the shivering and sleepless progression between Le Cateau and Carlsruhe in mid-winter. We occupied second-class carriages, well and warmly upholstered, and these we held without change throughout the journey of thirty odd hours.
[132]
The people encountered en route were entirely civil, and not over-curious. Every second woman seemed to bear upon her back—besides the apparent burden of the war—a basket; every third man a rucksack. ”

“ Then, the body being lowered into the grave, each of us casts upon it three shovelfuls of earth, making the sign of the Cross or saluting the military dead according to our creed and conception. And so we leave the poor dust, till it be disturbed by music more insistent and clamorous than the clarions of men! ”

“ I cannot dance, but there is always a portion of the ball, at least, to the beholder. Captain Sugrue and I had looked into the Gasthaus at the Railway Crossing. It was an animated scene which met our eyes. The saloon was decorated with flags and festoons of red roses, while about eighty couples, composed of German soldiers and their sweethearts—these last with countenances of a colour to match the decorations—danced on almost without cessation. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ By nine o’clock we are once more in Berlin. We hire a whole squadron of dilapidated hackney coaches and move in somewhat whimsical procession for an hour through the already dark and almost deserted streets.
Warnemünde. We pass immediately from the train to the quay, where the Danish ship Prins Christian is lying with steam up. A Danish officer is in waiting at the gangway, and as each officer answers to his name he passes over the ship’s side—a free man once more.
Lieut. Kruggel descends to the saloon to bid us good-bye. He shakes hands all round. ”

“ A prisoner myself, I imprison a few of these blossoms where they have fallen between the pages of my book. In the fall of a blossom or of a leaf from a tree there is the suggestion of a launch as well as of a funeral. ”

“ A dispirited-looking woman seemed to be in charge of affairs, and under her rather anxious direction our orderlies—all out for the afternoon—wheeled a piano into the hall, on which Lieutenant Davies and a German soldier, who has studied at the Berlin Conservatorium, alternately played melodies classic and cinematographic during the performance. ”

“ Outside the Lager was a great poplar with a fine upward thrust and sweep above the palisade; within was his tremulous sister, an aspen, with leaves all aquiver like sequins upon the attire of a gipsy dancer.
Even the barbed-wire fences seemed to make effort to hide something of their [117] menace, the grasses and weeds growing at their feet, laying frail hands upon them as if clinging to them for support.
LIEUT. CARUSO
A new hut is being erected in camp, and in the early morning, among the other perfumes of Nature, I noted with pleasure the smell of new wood. ”

“ Soon the shrapnel would begin to fall heavily into the courtyard, the pieces striking the ground and the roofs of our huts very viciously. In the morning we could usually pick up a large amount of shrapnel, some of the ragged shreds being almost a foot in length. During the night the sounding of the air-raid warning signal was customarily greeted by ironical cheers from the Allied prisoners; during a day attack we would stand out in the court and watch proceedings, although, with a commendable anxiety for our safety, the German authorities would urge us to take cover. ”

“ As the music passes into the lyric movement of the march I see wistfulness in the faces of some of the veteran warriors; regretfulness in the very stoop of their shoulders. There is something moving at all times even in the formal and ceremonial grief of man ”

“ If we pause before a public building, a soldier or sailor immediately approaches and asks if we desire to enter. In suchwise we get glimpse of a number of the important public institutions, including the modern and rather magnificent Royal Library. In the Royal Opera House, despite the revolution, performances are announced for to-night of Verdi’s “Otello,” for to-morrow (Sunday) night of “Rigoletto.”
Some of the streets running off Unter den Linden bear marks of yesterday’s fighting; some of them are still big with agitation; groups and queues of gesticulating soldiers and civilians. ”

“ In Berlin during the Revolution On a Friday evening of early December, my dear friend and fellow-prisoner, Captain Tim Sugrue, and I conspired to take French leave from the German prison Lager and make a bolt for Berlin. Six o’clock next morning found us at the station; a little diplomacy and we had obtained tickets—singles only, as we must return by a different route.
From Beeskow to Berlin is a run of two hours and a half. For the latter part of the journey we are with business men. There is unfolding of newspapers, and we catch sight of occasional headlines. ”

“ The heart hears, doubtless, yet it only says, soberly, even sadly, “Yes, that is so.” Perhaps later, after many days; [218] after months; in after-years, maybe, there will be the full realization that we have come out of captivity, and we shall be moved even to tears!
Meanwhile, our boxes have to be filled; our cupboards have to be emptied. My last recollection of the German soldiery—these legions of a would-be modern Rome—is of their standing around while we piled into their outspread arms our old pots and pans, boxes of broken biscuits, and fragments of hardened bread. ”

“ Glasgow Herald.—“Sergeant Lee’s verses are as frank and straight as we would wish a soldier-poet’s work to be; but behind all the humour and grim realism there is a poet’s ideal humanised by a Scot’s tenderness, and the serious poems are worthy of any company. Their courageous cheerfulness is inspiring.”
The Tatler.—“A little volume which I shall always hope to keep. Mostly these vivid little poems were composed well within the firing line; all of them are haunting—some because of their jocular soldier-spirit, others for their wonderful realization of the silent tragedy of war.” ”

“ The seed fights as it falls into the furrow. Money marches in ranks.... But ... men eat and sleep and wax fat. They hear of the death of millions, and say: ‘Yes, yes.’ Gods that descend before their very eyes, and the wonders of a heroism half divine, no longer move their senses—no sacrifice can stir them out of their daily rut. They have but one care to trouble them—it is that you might return greater than when you set forth. ”

“ Friendships were formed overnight, to be violently disrupted by departure on the morrow. In our little world was a complete epitome of life.
One afternoon in early March there arrived in camp a cartload of trunks and sea-chests bearing strange hieroglyphics, with a rumour that these would be followed by the officers of various nationality, including Japanese, captured from the ships sunk by the notorious German cruiser Wolf. ”

“ Sometimes, of an afternoon, one would hear from the other side of the palisade the sound of marching men—a sound as seemingly resolute and relentless as the progression of Fate. Sometimes came the playful and laughing cry of a little child. One day as I read and mused in “Rotten Row,” two schoolboys, doubtless home for the week-end, and at all events perched holiday-wise upon the roof of an hotel, made their presence known to me in pleasant and friendly fashion [42] by a cheerful whistle. ”