My Escape from Germany 17

My Escape from Germany 17

“You’ve finished your ‘solitary’!” he said.

 

“Do you mean to say to-day?” I asked. “Am I to have my cell door open,

and may I see the other men?”

 

When the hour of exercise was over, I sped up the stairs, taking four

steps at a stride, and searched for Kindman.

 

“I’m out of ‘solitary,’” I bawled. “I’m going to see the other chaps!”

 

“Hey, wait a moment,” he cried. “I must lock your cell door first.”

 

“But I tell you I’m out of ‘solitary’!”

 

“I believe you, though I don’t know officially. I’m not going to lock

you in, but lock the door I will. If we leave it open, you’ll find all

your things gone when you come back. These Poles would take anything

they can lay their hands on, and small blame to them. Most of them

haven’t a shirt to their back.”

 

I did not return to my cell until lock-up time, feeling comfortably

replete from various teas I had had, and my throat raw from incessant

talking.

 

The part of our block reserved for men in solitary confinement, one

side of the triangle, was separated from the rest by iron gates on each

landing. These gates barred access to the military part as well. They

were always kept locked. To clamber over them was easy enough; to be

seen doing so spelled seven days’ cells. My first care, consequently,

was to get a cell “in front of the gate.” This term was equivalent

among us for ordinary confinement as opposed to solitary, for, in

ordinary circumstances, nobody would willingly stay in a cell “behind

the gate” if not in “solitary,” and was, in fact, not supposed to do so.

 

An unexpected physical phenomenon, which I afterward observed in

others, made itself unpleasantly felt in my case. The first days

following my release from “behind the gate” I was extremely nervous and

restless; at times I longed to be back in “solitary” with the cell door

securely locked upon me.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIII

 

CLASSES AND MASSES IN THE STADTVOGTEI

 

 

The prisoners interned in the Stadtvogtei were divided into two

classes, the aristocrats, or rather the plutocrats, and the rest, thus

repeating faithfully the state of affairs in the outer world.

 

To the former belonged all the British without exception, a few

occasional Frenchmen and Belgians, a number of Russians of education

and means, temporarily some German socialists--they would be disgusted

if they read this--and one or two German undesirables, adventurers and

high-class pickpockets, who had come out of prison recently, but were

probably not considered safe enough to be at large.

 

The “rest” was composed of an ever-changing mass of Russian and Polish

laborers, never less than two hundred and fifty in number.

 

Wealth admitted to the upper class. The possibility of procuring food

was wealth. This explains why all the British were plutocrats, for they

received parcels from home, and had more food, as a rule, than anybody

else. Frenchmen and Belgians, on the contrary, held a precarious

position on the outside edge of society. Not having friends in Germany

who could supply them with food, as was the case with the Russian and

German plutocrats, and their parcels from France and Belgium being

exceedingly few, they were frequently in straits. But then, of course,

they were “taken up” by some of the “plutocratic” Englishmen, who chose

their associates according to other standards than those of digestible

possessions.

 

As far as malice aforethought is concerned, Englishmen have been,

and are, the worst treated of all the prisoners of war in Germany. I

believe the Russians had a harder time of it from sheer neglect by

the higher authorities, being delivered over to the tender mercies of

the German N.C.O. and private soldier, clothed with a little brief

authority. This class of human beings was always chary of tackling

Englishmen, either singly or in small groups.

 

In the Stadtvogtei the usual order was reversed. There we were

the cocks of the walk among the prisoners, and, in time, entirely

unofficial privileges developed appertaining to us as Englishmen. They

were inconspicuous enough in themselves. An incident will serve as an

illustration. It was the more startling in its significance as I had

no idea that the privilege in question had come to exist until it had

happened.

 

It was in the summer of 1917. The prisoners in ordinary confinement

were allowed to be in the courtyard at certain hours of the day, but

were supposed to enter and leave it only at the full and half-hours. I

had observed this rule so far, except on a very few occasions, when I

had asked the doorkeeper to let me in and out at odd times. I was doing

certain work for the British colony, which now and then called me there

on business.

 

One morning I happened to be walking about with Captain T., then

recently released from solitary confinement for an attempt at escaping.

We were waiting for the door to be unlocked to leave the yard, and when

the doorkeeper opened it between times, I, followed by the captain,

passed through, nodding my acknowledgment to the N.C.O. On seeing

my companion, he stepped up to him threateningly and shouted, “What

d’you mean by coming out, you ----” I had not grasped the situation,

but jumped between them instinctively and said, “Hold on. This is an

Englishman!”

 

“I beg your pardon, I didn’t know. I thought he was a Pole. I’ve never

seen him before.”

 

Captain T. had missed the meaning of the affair, and I had to explain

it to him. I went up the stairs to our cell feeling very chesty.

 

* * * * *

 

Up to the beginning of June, 1916, the British numbered less than

twenty. During the course of the summer and autumn our colony grew

until we were about thirty-four strong. More than half of the new

arrivals were escapers. We had our experiences in common, and a class

feeling, even some class characteristics. We certainly all felt

equally hostile to that particular section in Ruhleben camp whose

attitude toward us was summed up in these words: “Aren’t you ashamed of

yourselves? Can’t you stay and take your gruel?” We were actually asked

these questions.

 

K. was the doyen of our group. He was older than the rest. His attempt,

with a companion, in April, 1915, to which I have referred in a

previous chapter, was the first made from Ruhleben, and he had been at

liberty longer than any one else--more than three weeks. He was one

of the most charming men one could wish to meet, though, as he was a

Scotsman, it took some little time to break down his reserve. Hailing

from the same part of the kingdom, there were W. and M. who had been

in prison since June, 1915, followed soon after by Wallace Ellison,

my friend and comrade-to-be, and another man--both excellent fellows.

Wallace was my neighbor on the right, as K. was on the left, when I had

succeeded in getting a cell on the top floor, coveted on account of the

light and air and the greater expanse of sky visible from the window.

Of some of the men who came after me I shall speak later on.

 

One of my companions, not an escaper, was Dr. Béland, a well-known

Canadian. He had been residing in Belgium when the war broke out, and,

although a physician, he had been arrested in the summer of 1915, and

sent to prison in Berlin. The Germans regarded him as a member of an

enemy government, and justified their action in their own way, by

saying that this eliminated his standing as a member of the medical

profession. As a matter of fact, Dr. Béland was not a member of the

Cabinet in Canada, and had not been for some time. He belonged,

however, to the House of Commons.

 

Dr. Béland was a man of great personal charm. His wide experience,

his high good humor, which never failed under the ordinary, trying

conditions of life in prison, his readiness to help all those in

distress, and his brilliant powers as a conversationalist, made it a

delight to meet him. In the course of time we got to know each other

well, and in January, 1917, he rendered us, particularly a friend and

myself, a great service by the delicate handling of an affair which

almost got us sent to a penal prison.

 

Little consideration was ordinarily shown him by the German

authorities. When they had an opportunity, as once happened to be the

case, they treated him with a refined cruelty which created universal

indignation among his companions.

 

Apart from the British who were permanent boarders at our

establishment, occasional birds of passage on their way to Ruhleben

camp alighted there for a night or two. Most of them were boys who

had been residing in Belgium. Unable to get away when the invasion

overwhelmed that unhappy country, and not having attained the

“internable” age of seventeen, they had been compelled to stay on,

until the day of their seventeenth birthday brought their arrest and

subsequent internment as a Greek gift from the conquerors.

 

Among the other plutocrats, whatever their nationality, we found some

cheery and interesting companions. Several of the socialists were

men of high intellectual attainments and charming manners. We were on

the best terms with them, a circumstance which, I believe, gave rise

to some uneasiness to the prison governor. He certainly had always

something nasty to say about them, looking down from the height of

his semi-education upon men who knew what they were talking about,

who knew--none better--the German governing classes, and who were

perfectly frank about them. We often had them to tea in our cell. They

gave us sufficient insight into the pre-war intrigues which led to the

catastrophe, and into the falsehoods and falsifications of the German

Government, to make us catch our breath.

 

The component parts of the “rest,” the Polish and Russian laborers,

came and went. We did not get into real contact with them. The

difficulties of language stood in the way, for one thing. Poor and

ignorant, most of them illiterate, they were greatly to be pitied.

With very little besides the prison food to live on, and constantly

maltreated by the N.C.O.’s, it is still somewhat of a marvel to me

that they did not succumb. Their powers of passive resistance, their

ability under such circumstances to keep on living, and even to retain

a certain amount of cheerfulness, can be explained only by their low

intellectual and emotional standard and the centuries of slavery or

semi-slavery their ancestors had endured.

 

The most pitiable objects were boys, children almost, who occasionally

appeared among them. Tiny mites they were as to stature, with the

faces of old men on bodies of children of eight or nine years of age.

They, too, had been recruited by German agents. Most of them seemed to

have been sent into the coal-mines, where hard work and little food

had broken them completely. Their actual years were usually between

thirteen and sixteen.

 

With their mental powers almost destroyed, and nearly too weak to

walk, they used to sit in their cells or stand listlessly about the

corridors, their eyes lusterless and vacant.

 

Whenever any of them were about, they were taken on by some of us as

pensioners. But even a hearty meal set before them did not bring a

smile to their lips or a gleam into their eyes. Like graven images they

wolfed it down, tried to kiss your hand or the hem of your coat, and went to sit or stand as before.