Three Times and Out Part 19

However, the reason for paying us for our work was not so much their desire to give the laborer his hire as that the receipts might be shown to visitors, and appear in their records.

The Russians had a crucifix at the end of the hut which they occupied, and a picture of the Virgin and the Holy Child before which they bowed and crossed themselves in their evening devotions. Not all of them took part. There were some unbelieving brothers who sat morosely back, and took no notice, wrapped in their own sad thoughts.

I wondered what they thought of it all! The others humbly knelt and prayed and cried out their sorrows before the crucifix. Their hymns were weird and plaintive, yet full of a heroic hope that G.o.d had not forgotten.

One of them told me that G.o.d bottles up the tears of his saints, hears their cry, and in His own good time will deliver all who trust in Him. That deliverance has already come to many of them the white-crossed graves, beyond the marsh, can prove. But surely, somewhere an account is being kept of their sorrows and their wrongs, and some day will come the reckoning! Germany deserves the contempt of all nations, if it were for nothing else than her treatment of the Russian prisoners.

When my toe-nail began to grow on, I got permanent exemption from work because of my shoulder, and was given the light task of keeping clear the ditches that ran close beside the huts.

I often volunteered on parcel parties, for I liked the mile and a half walk down the road through the village of Parnewinkel to Selsingen, where there was a railway station and post-office. Once in a while I saw German women sending parcels to soldiers at the front.

The road lay through low-lying land, with scrubby trees. There was little to see, but it was a pleasure to get out of the camp with its depressing atmosphere. In Parnewinkel there was an implement dealer who sold "Deering" machinery, mowers and rakes, and yet I never saw either a mower or a rake working. I saw women cutting hay with scythes, and remember well, on one trip to the post-office, I saw an old woman, bare-legged, with wooden clogs, who should have been sitting in a rocking-chair, swinging her scythe through some hay, and she was doing it well, too. The scarcity of horses probably accounted for the mowers and rakes not being used, cows being somewhat too slow in their gait to give good results. Although Hanover is noted for its horses, the needs of the army seem to have depleted the country, and I saw very few. Every one rides a bicycle. I think I saw less than a dozen automobiles.

Having been exempted from work, I was around the camp all day, and one day found a four-legged affair with a ring on the top big enough to hold a wash-basin. In this I saw a possibility of making a stove.

Below, I put a piece of tin--part of a parcel-box--to hold the fire, with a couple of bricks under it to save the floor, and then, using the wooden parcel-boxes for fuel, I was ready to look about for ingredients to make "mulligan."

There is nothing narrow or binding about the word "mulligan"; mulligan can be made of anything. It all depended on what we had!

On this stove I made some very acceptable mulligan out of young turnip-tops (they had been brought to the camp when very small seedlings, from a farmer's field where one of our boys had been working, and transplanted in the prison-yard,--I only used the outside leaves, and let them go on growing), potatoes (stolen from the guards' garden), oxo cubes (sent in a parcel), oyster biscuits (also sent in a parcel), salt and pepper, and water. The turnip-tops I put in the bottom of the dish, then laid on the potatoes, covering with water and adding salt. I then covered this with another wash-basin, and started my fire. We were not allowed to have fires, and this gave the mulligan all the charm of the forbidden.

When it was cooked, I added the oxo cubes and the oyster biscuit, and mashed all together with part of the lid of a box, and the mulligan was ready. The boys were not critical, and I believe I could get from any one of them a recommendation for a cook's position. In the winter we had had no trouble about a fire, for the stoves were going, and we made our mulligan and boiled water for tea on them.

Our guards were ordinary soldiers--sometimes those who had been wounded or were sick and were now convalescent--and we had all sorts.

Usually the N.C.O.'s were the more severe. The privates did not bother much about us: they had troubles enough of their own.

At the school garden, where the Commandant lived, I went to work one day, and made the acquaintance of his little son, a blue-eyed cherub of four or five years, who addressed me as "Englisches Schwein,"

which was, I suppose, the way he had heard his father speak of us. He did it quite without malice, though, and no doubt thought that was our proper name. He must have thought the "Schwein" family rather a large one!

It was about May, I think, that a letter came from my brother Flint, telling me he was sending me some of the "cream cheese I was so fond of"--and I knew my compa.s.s was on the way.

In about three weeks the parcel came, and I was careful to open the cheese when alone. The lead foil had every appearance of being undisturbed, but in the middle of it I found the compa.s.s!

After that we talked over our plans for escape. Edwards and I were the only Canadians in the camp, and we were determined to make a break as soon as the nights got longer. In the early summer, when the daylight lasts so long, we knew we should have no chance, for there were only four or five hours of darkness, but in August we hoped to "start for home."

CHAPTER XIX

THE BLACKEST CHAPTER OF ALL

When the days were at their longest, some of the Russians who had been working for the farmers came into camp, refusing to go back because the farmers made them work such long hours. There is daylight-saving in Germany, which made the rising one hour earlier, and the other end of the day was always the "dark." This made about a seventeen-hour day, and the Russians rebelled against it. The farmers paid so much a day (about twenty-five cents) and then got all the work out of the prisoners they could; and some of them were worked unmercifully hard, and badly treated.

Each night, a few Russians, footsore, weary, and heavy-eyed from lack of sleep, trailed into camp with sullen faces, and we were afraid there was going to be trouble.

On the night of July 3d, three tired Russians came into camp from the farms they had been working on after we had had our supper. The N.C.O. was waiting for them. The trouble had evidently been reported to Headquarters, and the orders had come back. The Commandant was there, to see that the orders were carried out.

In a few minutes the N.C.O. started the Russians to run up and down the s.p.a.ce in front of the huts. We watched the performance in amazement. The men ran, with dragging footsteps, tired with their long tramp and their long day's work, but when their speed slackened, the N.C.O. threatened them with his bayonet.

For an hour they ran with never a minute's breathing-spell, sweating, puffing, lurching in their gait, and still the merciless order was "Marsch!" "Marsch!" and the three men went struggling on.

When the darkness came, they were allowed to stop, but they were so exhausted they had to be helped to bed by their friends.

We did not realize that we had been witnessing the first act in the most brutal punishment that a human mind could devise, and, thinking that the trouble was over, we went to sleep, indignant at what we had seen.

In the morning, before any of us were awake, and about a quarter of an hour before the time to get up, a commotion started in our hut.

German soldiers, dozens of them, came in, shouting to everybody to get up, and dragging the Russians out of bed. I was sleeping in an upper berth, but the first shout awakened me, and when I looked down I could see the soldiers flouris.h.i.+ng their bayonets and threatening everybody. The Russians were scurrying out like scared rabbits, but the British, not so easily intimidated, were asking, "What's the row?"

One of the British, Walter Hurc.u.m, was struck by a bayonet in the face, cutting a deep gash across his cheek and the lower part of his ear. Tom Morgan dodged a bayonet thrust by jumping behind the stove, and escaped without injury.

When I looked down, I caught the eyes of one of our guards, a decent old chap, of much the same type as Sank, and his eyes were full of misery and humiliation, but he was powerless to prevent the outbreak of frightfulness.

I dressed myself in my berth--the s.p.a.ce below was too full already, and I thought I could face it better with my clothes on. When I got down, the hut was nearly empty, but a Gordon Highlander who went out of the door a few feet ahead of me was slashed at by one of the N.C.O.'s and jumped out of the way just in time.

All this was preliminary to roll-call, when we were all lined up to answer to our names. That morning the soup had lost what small resemblance it had had to soup--it had no more nourishment in it than dishwater. We began then to see that they were going to starve every one into a desire to work.

We had not been taking soup in the morning, for it was, even at its best, a horrible dish to begin the day with. We had made tea or coffee of our own, and eaten something from our parcels. But this morning we were lined up with the Russians and given soup--whether we wanted it or not.

After the soup, the working parties were despatched, and then the three unhappy Russians were started on their endless journey again, racing up and down, up and down, with an N.C.O. standing in the middle to keep them going. They looked pale and worn from their hard experience of the night before, but no Bengal tiger ever had less mercy than the N.C.O., who kept them running.

The distance across the end of the yard was about seventy-five feet, and up and down the Russians ran. Their pace was a fast trot, but before long they were showing signs of great fatigue. They looked pitifully at us as they pa.s.sed us, wondering what it was all about, and so did we. We expected every minute it would be over; surely they had been punished enough. But the cruel race went on.

In an hour they were begging for mercy, whimpering pitifully, as they gasped out the only German word they knew--"Kamerad--Kamerad"--to the N.C.O., who drove them on. They begged and prayed in their own language; a thrust of the bayonet was all the answer they got.

Their heads rolled, their tongues protruded, their lips frothed, their eyes were red and scalded--and one fell prostrate at the feet of the N.C.O., who, stooping over, rolled back his eyelid to see if he were really unconscious or was feigning it. His examination proved the latter to be the case, and I saw the Commandant motion to him to kick the Russian to his feet. This he did with right good will, and the weary race went on.

But the Russian's race was nearly ended, for in another half-dozen rounds he fell, shuddering and moaning, to the ground--and no kick or bayonet thrust could rouse him...

Another one rolled over and over in a fit, purple in the face, and twitching horribly. He rolled over and over until he fell into the drain, and lay there, unattended.

The last one, a very wiry fellow, kept going long after the other two, his strength a curse to him now, for it prolonged his agony, but he fell out at last, and escaped their cruelty, at least for the time, through the black door of unconsciousness.

Then they were gathered up by some of the prisoners, and carried into the _Revier_.

Just as the three unconscious ones were carried away, three other Russians, not knowing what was in store for them, came in. We did not see them until they walked in at the gate. They also had been on farms, and were now refusing to work longer. They came into the hut, where their frightened countrymen were huddled together, some praying and some in tears. The newcomers did not know what had happened. But they were not left long in doubt. An N.C.O. called to them to "heraus," and when they came into the yard, he started them to run.

The men were tired and hungry. They had already spent months on the farms, working long hours: that did not save them. They had dared to rebel, so their spirits must be broken.

Our hearts were torn with rage and pity. We stormed in and out of the huts like crazy men, but there was nothing we could do. There were so few of us, and of course we were unarmed. There was no protest or entreaty we could make that would have made any appeal. Orders were orders! It was for the good of Germany--to make her a greater nation--that these men should work--the longer hours the better--to help to reclaim the bad land, to cultivate the fields, to raise more crops to feed more soldiers to take more prisoners to cultivate more land to raise more crops.

It was perfectly clear to the Teutonic mind. No link in the chain must be broken. Deutschland uber Alles!

At noon the Russians were still running--it is astonis.h.i.+ng what the human machine can stand! The N.C.O. impatiently snapped his watch and slashed at the one who was pa.s.sing him, to speed them up, and so hasten the process. He was getting hungry and wanted his dinner. Then an order came from the Commandant that it was to be stopped--and we hoped again, as we had the night before, that this was the end.