My Escape from Germany 2

My Escape from Germany 2

The game was lost. That was the kernel of the situation as it presented

itself to me, sitting on my bed in the narrow, dark cell.

 

Vreden, where I thus found myself in prison, is a little town hardly

three miles from the Dutch frontier, in the Prussian province of

Westphalia. So near--and indeed a good deal nearer--had I got to

liberty!

 

Twenty-four hours before, my first attempt to escape from

Germany--which might be described with some justification as my

third--had failed, and instead of being a free man in a neutral

country, I was still a British civilian prisoner of war.

 

Apart from the overwhelming sense of failure which oppressed me, I

was not exactly physically comfortable. To start with, I wanted a

change of clothing and a real bath. I had not had my boots off--except

during several hours when I was walking in bare feet for the sake of

silence--for over eight days, and for almost the same length of time

I had not even washed my hands. The change of clothing was out of the

question. The bath--One does not feel as if one has had a bath after an

ablution in a tin basin holding a pint of water, with a cake of chalky

soap the size of a penny-piece, and a towel which, but for texture,

would have made a tolerable handkerchief. And no water to be spilled on

the floor of the cell, mind you!

 

My prison bed was an old, wooden “civilian” one with a pile of

paillasses on it, and the usual two blankets. It was fairly comfortable

to lie on, as long as the numerous indigenous population left you

alone, which they rarely did.

 

The warder--the only one, I believe, in the prison--had asked me

immediately after my arrival whether or not I had any money on me.

When he heard I had not, his face fell. Since he could not make me

profitable he made me useful, and put me to peeling potatoes in the

morning, a job I liked very much under the circumstances.

 

The food in Vreden prison was scanty, barely sufficient. I was always

moderately hungry, and ravenous when meal-time was still two or three

hours off. Twice in four days I had an opportunity of walking for

twenty minutes round the tiny prison yard, sunless and damp, where

green moss spread itself in three untrodden corners, while the fourth

was occupied by a large cesspool. The rest of my time I spent alone in

my cell, now and again reading a few pages of Jules Verne’s “Five Weeks

in a Balloon,” execrably translated into German and lent me by the

warder. But mostly I was busy speculating about my immediate future, or

thinking of the eighteen months of my captivity in Germany.

 

Technically, I was not being punished as yet for my escape. I was

merely being kept under lock and key pending my removal back to

Ruhleben camp or to a prison in Berlin, I did not know which. But if it

was not punishment I was undergoing in the little frontier town, it was

an excellent imitation of it.

 

Some experiences, exciting when compared with the dull routine of camp

life, were still ahead of me; the journey to Berlin was something to

look forward to, at any rate. But what would happen afterward? I did

not know, for I flatly refused to believe in solitary confinement to

the end of the war--the punishment which had been suggested as in store

for unsuccessful escapers.

 

I had not escaped from Ruhleben, as my predecessors had. I had walked

out of a virtually unguarded sanatorium in Charlottenburg, a suburb

of Berlin, where British civilian prisoners of war, suffering from

diseases and ailments which could not be properly combated in camp,

were treated. Might not this give an earnest to a plea which was

shaping in my mind? Could the Germans be persuaded to believe that

I had acted under the influence of an attack of temporary insanity,

caused by overwhelming homesickness? True, I had “gone away” well

prepared; I had shown a certain amount of determination and tenacity of

purpose. On the other hand, I had not destroyed any military property.

Of course, I had damaged a good deal of property, but it wasn’t

military property! A fine point, but an important one, especially in

Germany.

 

These were the sort of reflections which mostly occupied my four days

in Vreden prison, unreasoning optimism struggling desperately against

rather gloomy common sense.

 

What I looked forward to most in the solitude of my cell was a meeting

with my old friends in Ruhleben camp in the near future. The other

escapers had all been returned to camp for a short time before they

were taken to prison, to demonstrate to us ocularly the hopelessness

of further attempts. Surely the Germans would do the same with me; and

then I should get speech with one or two of my particular chums. For

this I longed with a great longing, although I did not look forward to

telling them that I had failed.

 

Only one of them knew the first links in the chain of events which

connected my sensations of the first day of the war with the present,

when I was restlessly measuring the length of my cell, or sitting

motionless on the edge of the bed, staring with dull eyes upon the

dirty floor. Under the pressure of my disappointment, and without the

natural safety-valve of talk to a friendly soul, I naturally began to

examine my experiences during the war, opening the pigeon-holes of my

memory one by one, reliving an incident here, revisualizing a picture

there, and retracing the whole length of the--to me--most important

developments leading up to my attempted escape.

 

* * * * *

 

When the storm clouds of the European war were gathering I was living

in Neuss, a town on the left bank of the Rhine, between Düsseldorf, a

few miles to the north, and Cologne, twenty miles to the south. I had

been there a little over a year. Immersed though I was in business, I

was by no means happy. I was distinctly tired of Germany, and was on

the point of cutting short my engagements and leaving the “Fatherland.”

 

I had turned thirty some time before, and hitherto my life, although

it had led me into many places, had been that of an ordinary business

man. In spite of unmistakable roaming proclivities, it was likely to

continue placidly enough. Then suddenly everything was changed.

 

One afternoon, about the 20th of July, I was standing in the enclosure

of the Neuss Tennis Club, waiting for a game. The courts were close to

a point where a number of important railway lines branched off toward

Belgium and France. I was watching and wondering about the incessant

traffic of freight-trains which for days past had been rolling in that

direction at about fifteen-minute intervals. They consisted almost

exclusively of closed trucks.

 

Another member of the club pointed his racket toward one. “War

material. Soldiers!” he said succinctly. With a sinking heart I gazed

after the train as it disappeared from view. The political horizon was

clouded, but surely it wouldn’t come to this! It couldn’t come to this.

It was impossible that it should happen.

 

The police, always troublesome and inquisitive in Germany, seemed to be

taking some unaccountable interest in me. Nothing was further from my

mind than to connect this lively interest in an obscure individual like

myself with anything so stupendous as a war.

 

And then it happened. War was declared.

 

I was warned not to leave the town without permission. I was eating my

head off in idleness and anxiety. I hoped to be sent out of the country

at short notice, but the order to pack up and be gone did not come.

Instead, I was invited to call upon the inspector of police at 9 A.M.

on the 27th of August. I obeyed. An hour later I was locked up in a

cell of an old, evil-smelling, small prison. I did not know for what

reason, beyond the somewhat incomprehensible one of being a British

subject. Nor did I know for how long. The inspector of police had

answered my questions with an Oriental phrase: It was an order!

 

It appeared that the order referred to Britishers of military age only,

which, according to it, began with the seventeenth and ended with the

thirty-ninth year. Thus it came about that I made the acquaintance

of three out of the six Englishmen then temporarily living in Neuss,

but hitherto beyond my ken. They were all fitters of a big Manchester

firm, Messrs. Mather & Platt Ltd., employed in putting up a sprinkler

installation in the works of the International Harvester Co., an

American concern in Neuss.

 

We were treated comparatively well in prison. Nevertheless, the days

we had to pass in that old, evil-smelling house of sorrows were

interminable. Most of our time we spent together, in a locked-up part

of the corridor on the second floor. Outside it was glorious summer

weather. All our windows were open to the breeze, which never succeeded

in dispersing the stench pervading the whole building. Sitting on

the uncomfortable wooden stools, or walking idly about, we smoked

incessantly, read desultorily in magazines and books, and talked

spasmodically. And always the air vibrated with the faint, far-away,

half-heard, half-sensed muttering of distant guns. The news in the

German newspapers was never cheering to us.

 

As suddenly as we had been arrested we were released from prison after

eleven days, and confined to the town.

 

There followed nine weeks of inactivity and endless waiting. For the

first time I gave a fleeting thought to an attempt of making my way out

of Germany by stealth. It hardly seemed worth while, as we were “sure

of being exchanged sooner or later”! Twice I left the town for a few

hours. On my return I always found the police fully conversant with

every one of my moves, which showed how carefully they were watching

me. Having always provided excellent explanations for my actions, I

escaped trouble over these escapades.

 

As announced beforehand in the German press, we were arrested again

on November 6, 1914. We passed four cheery days in the old familiar

prison, and then came the excitement of our departure for Ruhleben

camp, via Cologne, where we and a hundred and fifty other civilian

prisoners, collected from the Rhine provinces, spent a night in a large

penal prison.

 

Under a strong escort we were marched to the station at seven the

following morning. Before starting we had been told that there was

only one punishment for misbehavior on transport--death! Misbehavior

included leaving the ranks in the streets or leaning out of the windows

when in the railway carriages.

 

Entraining at eight o’clock, we did not reach our final destination

until twenty-three hours later. The first hour or so of our journey

was tolerable. We were in third-class carriages. Having had hardly any

breakfast, and no tea or supper the previous day, we soon became hungry

and thirsty. But we were not even allowed to get a drink of water.

Whenever the train drew into a station, the Red Cross women rushed

toward our carriages with pots of coffee and trays of food, under the

impression that we were Germans on the way to join our regiments. But

they were always warned off by uniformed officials: “Nothing for those

English swine.” We were evidently beyond the pale of humanity.

 

At 2 A.M. we disembarked at Hanover station, to wait two hours for

another train. Here a bowl of very good soup was served out to us.