The Black Watch Part 14

"At last, I dimly distinguished the presence of a party. Then I saw them turn over some of the dead Highlanders as they came across them, give each a kick, and pa.s.s on. By this time I could see they were stretcher-bearers--and Prussians, at that. I was already on my back and therefore hoped they would pa.s.s me--praying all the time that they would, I kept staring up at the stars. The Huns _were_ pa.s.sing, but it was over my body. The carrier at the front of the empty stretcher stepped over me, but the man in the rear stepped directly on one of my wounded legs. The pain caused me to groan out. At this they halted and spoke, gruffly, in German.

"They took the contents out of my pockets and haversack, opened the stretcher, laid it alongside of me, rolled me very roughly onto it, and picked it up. Every once in a while during the journey to the dressing station which was quite some distance over broken ground, they would stop and drop the stretcher on the ground, which caused me to groan more and more. There were hundreds of wounded Germans at the station.

"Here I was rolled out of the stretcher. I could feel that the pleats of my kilt were soaked with blood. Presently a little insignificant-looking German with spectacles on looked at me, and asked in English: 'What is the nature of your wounds?'

"I told him. He looked at them very hastily, then said: 'You are lucky.

They should have been eight inches farther up.' With a grunt he went to attend to the Prussian patients.

"With that, the Hun lying next to me--he had been wounded through the arm and foot--noticed me and commenced spitting on me and cursing in German. I made no protest. I was too utterly weak and exhausted.

"At last ambulances drew up near by, and the wounded Germans, after having their wounds dressed, were placed in them. My turn came to be carried onto the ambulance, without, however, any attention having been given to my wounds. After a great deal of jolting about, our ambulance drew up near a railway siding, and the German patients were served with some hot coffee, then we were all put on board a train. By this time it was daylight.

Almost as soon as I was put on the train it began to move off.

"Shortly afterward, a tall, lean German doctor came over and looked at me, then renewed my dressing, which was the first since yours, Reuter. He asked me in broken English if I had had anything to eat. When I answered in the negative, he walked away and looked over the other patients and talked to them. After quite some time, a German orderly came to me with some hot milk and a sandwich of black bread and very bad-smelling cheese.

I was given the same treatment as the others while on the train. The doctor told me there were more English wounded on the train, but that was all he said. I cannot say how long I was on the train, but at last, after a lot of shunting, it halted, and all the German wounded were taken off.

"An armed guard of two men came in and took their posts beside me. I was given coffee and more black bread and cheese. I was transferred into a sort of truck, the guard being with me. They cut a few b.u.t.tons off my jacket as souvenirs.

"After another considerable journey, I was put into a motor ambulance, which brought me to my destination. It was dark when I reached this place and I could not see my surroundings. I was carried into a hut-like arrangement, where I found others, German and British soldiers, and some French also.

"I was only a few minutes in this 'hut' when a big fat, over-fed, severe-looking German officer came in and growled out something in a rough voice. A nurse rushed up to his side. He growled out something else, and she immediately went out. In less time than it takes to tell, she came back with what no doubt he had been growling for. It was a sheet of paper and he commenced reading from it. It was to the effect that the English prisoners would not be allowed to disobey any of the officers, soldiers, orderlies or nurses--that if they should do so they would be instantly put to death. If they wished to make complaints they were to do so through the orderlies. However, if the complaint should not be a proper and truthful one, the prisoner making it would be liable to be put to death.

He also strongly emphasized the fact that if any prisoner was caught attempting to smuggle or write letters, the sentence of death would instantly be imposed on him. At this point he went away.[2]

"My heart sank. I got so homesick and much weaker; my hopes gave out entirely. I had been thinking that, on reaching my destination, I would be allowed to write home; and now----?

"I must have lost consciousness, for it was day time when I awoke, to find two doctors examining my legs, with a number of young students standing around me. One of the doctors, an old man, who spoke excellent English, said that both my thighs were badly fractured and that it would be necessary to operate on me the next morning. Then he commenced explaining to the young doctors. After the explanation was over, they all walked away.

"The next morning I was taken to the operating theatre, which had a gallery all 'round packed with young German students. On the floor there were only a nurse, the old doctor who had spoken to me the previous day, and a few attendants. I was lying on a sort of high-wheel stretcher. The young students were laughing and jeering, when suddenly the old doctor turned on them furiously, using some hot German language, and instantly there was quietness. Then a cap was put under my nose.

"When I came out of the chloroform there was a cage arrangement over my legs and I had no pillow for my head. At the moment I thought it was a very mean trick to do me out of it, but after some experience in the hospital I learned that it was to prevent me from getting sick upon recovering from the effects of the anaesthetic.

"There were about eighteen patients and two nurses in the hut where I was.

The nurses took turns of night duty week about. The day nurse during my first week there was a very severe and sour-faced creature. She could speak a little English, and I'm sure she did not speak to me more than twenty times, and not once kindly. The night nurse was a woman about forty years of age. She could speak only a very little English, but she was pleasant and good-natured. She took more care of me than any of them and would bring me a gla.s.s of milk now and again when the guards were not looking. She also informed me that this was the place that students came to, for practising and experimenting on the wounded prisoners, and added that I would have a lot more operations--which I had.

"Conditions became worse as months dragged on. It was now summer of 1915, and still my legs were not allowed to set. One operation followed another.

I saw an iron plate with rusty screw nails an inch long, that had been used to patch up my thigh bones. I suffered much physically--but worse than that was the mental suffering I experienced, worrying about my folks at home.

"Every other day, young sarcastic doctors would come in, take the splints off, and commence squeezing and turning my broken legs in a painful fashion. Some would shout: 'English swine, why don't you cry out?' but I don't remember doing so when any of them were near me.

"The food got worse and worse toward winter. I got three meals a day.

Breakfast consisted of weak coffee and a slice of black bread with some kind of lard spread on it. Dinner was herring bone or potato-peel soup, or ham-bone soup with a slice of heavy potato bread. Supper was a repet.i.tion of breakfast except that very often the lard was absent.

"There were two German patients who got the best of attention. I learned though, that they were wounded in the act of deserting, and were to be court-martialed upon recovery. After they were able to sit up they would get a large jug of beer with their midday meal and this was a keen torture to me.

"I became determined to find some way of communicating with my sweetheart and friends at home, to let them know I was still alive. The night nurse told me she expected to go near the firing line for duty, so I asked her if she could try to smuggle out a letter for me so that it would reach my friends. At first, she very positively refused, saying that should the effort be found out, she would be instantly shot, but after I explained my case to her and pleaded with her she brought me a pencil and note paper and watched a chance when all was quiet. She put a screen round me and whispered in my ear to praise the commandant, and the doctors, and write in the brightest manner of everyone there. Thus, she said, the censor might allow the letter to go through.

"While she watched the guards, I scribbled, doing all she told me to. I described the place and commandant something in the following manner:

This is a most beautiful place. I think it's the prettiest hospital in the great German Empire. It is even more elaborate than the wonderful Peterhead sanatorium at home, and the commandant is the nicest old gentleman. The staff, here, is also superior. We get the best of food and plenty of it and all kinds of recreation. Even visitors bring English magazines and treat me like a relative.

"After finishing it, I gave it to the nurse to read. I had written all the sheet could contain. She looked it over and seemed very pleased with it and said that it would pa.s.s the censor all right. She sealed it, then affixed a stamp, and hid it away in her dress, promising to post it next morning.

"I thought it was rather neat, my working in the Peterhead prison in Aberdeenshire, as a sanatorium.

"After the nurse's departure, I slept peacefully and with an easy mind, as if a great burden had been lifted from it.

"When the usual batch of sarcastic young German students came next morning and started in jeering at me, I smiled. One of them instantly leaped forward and gave me a stinging blow on the face with his open palm. I managed to contain myself--but how I did it, I don't know.

"That same evening, the commandant came in raging. He nearly ate me up, while in the act of producing the letter I had written the previous night.

I longed so for the ground to open and swallow me up. He said the penalty for the offence was death. At first I denied that I knew anything about the letter, but he shouted: 'Do you not remember giving the same address upon coming here?'

"I did, only too well.

"After blazing out on me, he left, cursing in German. I made up my mind that I was doomed, but decided to lie as long as I could on my cot, as I felt that I would no doubt be shot as soon as I was able to get out of bed. That night a big masculine-looking nurse came on duty, and she was a perfect virago.

"I learned with deep regret that the kind nurse was moved--perhaps shot. I watched my chance, and at night, when no one had eyes on me, I twisted in such a fashion that my thigh bones could not possibly get a chance to knit together. The agony I suffered was fearful, but I did not care. In the morning my temperature would go up and further operations would follow. I continued doing this for a week or so but at last I could not stand it. I just had to lie still.

"In December I began to get up for a few hours daily. It was torture to me when I tried to move around. I was so very weak and all the-muscle and flesh had left my body. I was reduced to almost skin and bone.

"I was not even given a stick to support me. I limped about for a few weeks, then received my uniform and was moved to the prisoners' enclosure, where there were one thousand British prisoners. Like myself, none of these fellows was allowed to write home, and I don't suppose they will be--until they are set free. We were crowded into tents. The food was terrible; I have seen pigs get better. But we ate it just the same.

"The next morning after breakfast, we were all marched out to make roads, chop wood, and do all kinds of convict work. Some of the men had a leg off, others had an arm off as well as being otherwise crippled; but they all had to work.

"I wasn't able to keep up with the rest while marching out to the place where I was to work and one of the German guards started poking the b.u.t.t of his rifle into my ribs. This was his way of making me keep up with the rest of them. I tried hard and finally managed to reach the spot where our men were working. I was given wood to saw.

"I managed to stick to it about half an hour, then I fainted. When I came to myself again a big dirty Prussian was kicking me and telling me to get on with my work. But I couldn't. Upon seeing this, a man from our squad was ordered to wheel me back to camp in a barrow with a German walking alongside with his rifle slung over his shoulder, smoking a long pipe and jeering all the way. I was at once cla.s.sed as 'worthless.'

"Our officers had to work like the other men, but the special job given them was road-sweeping. I was given some dirty work to do around the prison camp for a few days, until at last I had to be put in the hospital again on account of weakness. One of my legs was shorter than the other, owing to the manner in which they had practised on me.

"This time I was in the hospital only about two weeks. Then I got my clothes, and the commandant came in and informed me that he got orders to supply six worthless English prisoners from the camp for exchange. 'You are the first on the list,' he said. 'You are no good to anybody. You cannot even work for the food you get.'

"I could hardly realize my good fortune. I wept with joy. To think of being sent home as an exchanged prisoner!

"I 'fell in' along with five more fellows, one was stone blind; his face was an awful sight--all dark blue as if it had been tattooed. The other four had body injuries. We were placed in a motor truck which conveyed us to a railway station, then we were packed in trucks with a few sentries over us.

"One of the sentries, out of pity, gave one of our men a cigarette. The poor fellow had just lighted it off the stump the sentry was about to throw away, when a German officer rushed forward and knocked it out of his mouth with his glove, and had him taken away at once. The sentry who had given him the f.a.g was ordered to take off his equipment, and two of the German guards marched the British prisoner and German sentry away.

"Two nights later we landed at a port and were marched on to a steamer. I think it was a Dutch boat, as I did not see any Germans on board until we were out at sea, when we were gathered together, and a German staff officer of the navy gave us a lecture. He finished up by saying that we were not free of the German Government until we landed in England, and should any of us disobey while on board, we would at once be sent back to Germany. You may depend upon it that we obeyed.

"After we boarded the boat we were given some Capstan Navy-Cut Cigarettes--and got a good meal, the first since I had been taken prisoner. I was so overjoyed that I sat in a corner and did not utter a word until I landed on British soil, then I prayed silently and thanked G.o.d for bringing me back to a civilized country. I think there were over six hundred exchanged British prisoners on the same boat.

"When we landed in England, we were taken to a hospital, and those of us who were able to travel were asked if we wanted to go straight home for a few days, and report for medical treatment in our own districts. I think all those who weren't able to do much more than crawl said they preferred to go straight home. Next morning at 8 o'clock I was given two sovereigns and a furlough, pending discharge.

"After receiving the money, I boarded the first train for Auchterarder, where 'the la.s.s' lived. She had opened a millinery business in my absence.

The train left at 10 A.M., and I arrived at Auchterarder depot at 8.15 P.M. It was about a mile from the station to Jeanie's house. I wanted to get there as soon as I could, and walking was out of the question. So I managed to coax a teamster to go a little bit out of his way and let me off near her home. I wanted to surprise her, so went on upstairs in her house quietly.

"As I climbed up I could hear the sound of much merriment coming from the upper rooms. The first thought that struck me was that perhaps she had been already notified and was preparing a surprise for me. Yet it seemed strange, as I had sent no word ahead of me--not even a telegram.

"I felt real nervous upon reaching the door, and wondered what I should say on entering it. At last I summoned up courage and opened the door. I stood still. The sight that met me dazed me. I couldn't believe my own eyes.