The Escape of a Princess Pat Part 14

"Engelsch!" he boomed. We nodded. He simply threw his arms round first one and then the other, so that I wiped the ashes from his pipe out of my eyes. He lumbered off and shortly returned with a counterpart of himself. He talked rapidly to his companion and waved his pipe. We made out the words "Duitsch," "Engelsch," and enough of others to know that he was telling our tale as he imagined it.

Our fears coming uppermost, we gave voice to them: "Intern?"

"No intern. Engelsch." The other took up the cry: "Engelsch goot!

Frient." However our suspicions would not down.

The first man pointed out to the ca.n.a.l where a barge lay and made us understand that it was his. He wanted us to work our pa.s.sage on it down the ca.n.a.l with him. They invited us by signs to go on board the barge for breakfast, an invitation which we joyfully accepted. We rowed out to the barge and sat down in the tiny cabin. The meal was plain. On the centre of the table was a loaf of brown bread, quite good enough it was true, but so reminiscent of the perennial black ration of the Germans that my gorge rose at the sight. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a white loaf on the shelf, the first in fifteen months. I caught Simmons eyeing it. We exchanged guilty looks but were ashamed to ask for it. They offered us the brown loaf and delicious coffee. I thought perhaps that if we exhausted the brown loaf the other might be forthcoming. I kicked Simmons on the shins and fell to on it, and, as opportunity offered, thrust pieces in the pockets of my tunic until, to our relief, they brought out the white bread, which we devoured to the last crumb. It was very good.

We filled our pipes in high contentment and went ash.o.r.e, where a procession of enthusiastic villagers waited to escort us to the village. Men, women and children, wooden shoes and all, there were four hundred of them. The men all shook hands and pressed money on us.

The women cried and one white-haired old lady kissed us both. The quaint little roly-poly children ran at our sides, a half dozen of them struggling to hold our fingers in their chubby fists.

The procession started off, the burgomaster leading, the two sailors and ourselves coming next. Some one behind dragged out a mouth organ and struck up Tipperary, and men, women and children all joined in. It was glorious. We sang, too, in English, and they in their tongue. The result was so ridiculous a medley that I smiled myself; but it made no difference. The spirit was there; we were happy.

Arriving at the village the burgomaster took us to his home and sat us down to a steaming breakfast, while a few of the chosen were invited in to watch us polish it off. The crowd remained outside, choking the road. Some of the bolder of the children crept slyly in the door, others peered shyly at us from the crack of it. And one little chap, braver than his comrades, clumped st.u.r.dily up to my knee, where he stood clutching it in round-eyed wonder and saying never a word for the rest of the meal, envied of his mates.

Not until we had leaned back, not contented, but ashamed to ask for more, did our hosts give vent to the curiosity that was eating into their vitals. An interpreter was found and they led us out to the road so that all might hear. The crowd flocked around while the officials questioned us. Many were the smothered interjections that went up from the men and exclamations of pity from the women as our tale unfolded. And the warm sympathy of their honest faces warmed our hearts like a good fire.

We started off on our triumphal course again. We were repeatedly invited into houses for something to eat. We accepted seven such breakfast invitations during the next two and a half hours and stopped only out of shame. We were still hungry. Every one gave us cigars, immense things, which projected from every pocket and which we carried in bundles under our arms. There was no refusing them. They were the insignia of the entente. And the coffee! The good, honest, Holland coffee with no acorns in it! I doubt if our starving bodies could have carried us many days more on the uncooked roots we had been living on.

The motherly housewives, in their Grecian-like helmets of metal and gla.s.s that fit closely over their smoothed hair like skull-caps, bustled merrily about, intent only on replenishing our plates and cups, full of a tearful sympathy which was as welcome as their food.

Later in the day the officials took us to the police station at ----.

We became very much alarmed again. They read our thoughts and a subdued murmur of: "No intern, no intern," swelled up. The local burgomaster came to us. His first words, and in good English, too, were: "Have something to eat." We did. And then more cigars. The police were a splendid lot of men. They loaded us down with gifts and asked perfunctory questions for their records. One of them, H. Letema, of ----, took us to his home, where his comely wife and daughter loaded the table with good things; while he brought out more cigars.

He showed us to a bed-room before we understood where he was taking us. We refused, for reasons of a purely personal nature. "Nix," we said, and when he would not accept our refusal we tried it in Niederlander. "No, no." Still he persisted, and his good wife too. So we led him firmly aside and showed him the indescribably verminous condition we were in. That convinced him. They appreciated that little touch and gave us a deep pile of blankets, flung down on three feet of sweet-smelling straw in an outhouse, where we slept as we had not slept for many months.

In the morning Letema escorted us down to Aaschen, which was the nearest large town. A Belgian and a Holland lady, hearing of the escaped English prisoners, met us within twenty minutes of our arrival, took us in hand and loaded us down with kindnesses. We ate only five full sized meals that day, not counting the extras we absorbed between them. And there were more cigars. The raw oats and potatoes seemed a long way off.

Our day at Aaschen was a repet.i.tion of the previous one at Alboom and Borger, but on a grander scale. The ladies took us down to Rotterdam and did not leave us until they had turned us over to the British consul there, whose name I have forgotten but who, with the vice consul, Mr. Mueller, was very kind indeed; in fact, all whom we met, irrespective of their nationality, age or s.e.x placed us under eternal obligations to them. In particular Mr. Neilson, the rector of the English church and in charge of the Sailors' Inst.i.tute there, seemed to live only for us.

Mr. Henken at the American consulate was equally kind. They lodged us at the Seaman's Rest, took our painted rags away and clothed us in blue "civvie" suits which seemed to us the height of sinful luxury.

We were shaved, clean and could eat everything in sight, at any time of the day or night. And did so. The meals we used to shift! We were very glad to get rid of our waterproof suits--for that is what they had become, from the paint.

Mr. Neilson took us sight seeing every day. Once we went out to Mr.

Carnegie's Peace Palace which had been closed on account of the war but which we were permitted to inspect. I had not thought such buildings were done, except in dreams. It made our own bitter past seem unreal. The Italian room, in particular, seemed like a delicate canvas in marble and done in a fashion the memory of which gripped me for days and still haunts me. We spent days thus; supremely happy.

We were joined here by Jerry Burke of the 8th Battalion of Winnipeg.

He was a nephew of Sir Sam Hughes, the then Canadian Minister of Militia and had just made his escape from some other camp.

We were to have left on the fifth with a fleet of boats which sailed then. By the time we had got on board, however, the sailors from the first boat were returning. They had been torpedoed. And that stopped us.

We got away on the S.S. _Grenadier_ on the sixteenth, and after hugging the length of the English Coast, arrived safely at Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the eighteenth.

Here our troubles began!

CHAPTER XX

"IT'S A WAY THEY HAVE IN THE ARMY"

Red Tape in the Army--A Disgruntled Soldier--"Old Soldier, Old Fox"--A Touch for Twenty Quid--_Augen Rechts_ at Seaford--Canada!

My family in Canada have since remarked that although my letters had invariably been cheerful throughout my imprisonment, from the time I set foot on English soil they reflected the deepest despondency. That could be explained in part by the fact that uncheerful letters could not pa.s.s the German but could pa.s.s the British censor. But more particularly it was due to the fact that I became entangled in the interminable red tape of the army system, and, instead of meeting with the warm sympathy that an exile longs for, met, on the part of the army, with cold suspicion; however kind some individuals were to me.

Simmons and I were not permitted to leave the boat until the military came for us. So far so good. We were taken to the headquarters of the General Officer Commanding that district. He briefly examined us and good-naturedly gave us some money out of his own pocket and tickets to London, where we were ordered to report at the War Office.

Arriving in "The Smoke," as the army has named that city, we proceeded the next morning to 14 Downing Street and sent our names in to the official we had been directed to by the general. He was in mufti, whoever he was, and received us kindly enough. We were closely questioned about our experiences, particularly in relation to our guards, food, treatment, and so on. He also asked us as to the amount of sickness among the prisoners, the condition of the country, and so on.

Dismissed, we made a dash down past Big Ben and the Parliament Buildings for the Canadian Pay and Record Office, where at Millbank it overlooked the Thames. A sergeant took our names and after a time took us, too, in to the paymaster. Simmons drew his money without difficulty but I found that I was fifteen months dead and was told that I could get no money until my ident.i.ty was reestablished. I protested; so much so in fact that I fully expected to land in the "clink." No use. I was sent out on the street talking to myself.

We next called on Lady Rivers-Bulkeley and Lady Drummond to thank them for the very great kindness of themselves and the Canadian Red Cross in sending us our parcels regularly, and without which we would a.s.suredly have been too weak to have made our escape. Lady Farquhar, the wife of our late commanding officer, was out of town, so we did not see her, much as we desired to thank her for similar kindnesses.

Simmons was single. He was sent to Canada at once and was promptly discharged. I had a wife and family awaiting me there and I wanted badly to go to them by the next boat. My wife had been receiving letters from me during my fifteen months' imprisonment; she had regularly received her separation allowance; the Canadian Red Cross and many kind friends in London had been sending me prisoner-of-war parcels for a year; the authorities admitted my ident.i.ty and my former comrades recognised me; I had fifteen months' pay at $1.20 a day, besides a subsistence allowance of sixty-five cents a day, coming to me; but could not draw a cent of it. I was dead. And continued so for three months. There is no explanation. "It's a way they have in the Army"; or so the army says.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CEMETERY AT CELLE LAAGER Z 1 CAMP.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CORPORAL EDWARDS (SECOND FROM LEFT) AFTER HIS ESCAPE. THE TWO GOLD BARS ON HIS LEFT COAT SLEEVE INDICATE THAT HE HAS BEEN TWICE WOUNDED.]

In the end it was only through the active intervention of Sir George Perley, the Canadian High Commissioner in London that my case was righted. He, I believe, cabled the Ottawa authorities, who in turn got in touch with my wife, who produced the necessary doc.u.mentary evidence to prove that I had been alive and a prisoner all this time.

I went to the depot at Seaford. I borrowed from my old friends. I hung round the pay office. The paymaster said I was not on the strength of the regiment. I was old soldier enough to profit by that calamity at least. The bitter injustice of such miscarriage of justice blinded me, as I think it eventually does most soldiers, to the accepted code of civil life. I refused to attend roll call or do drills, fatigues, or any other part of my regimental duties other than certain interesting and thrice-daily rites not unconnected with the kitchen.

It is the commonness, the constant repet.i.tion of such stupidity and such lack of action that so much injures the reputation for intelligence of the army in the minds of those who have served in it; so that those who know it best, like it least--and put up with it only because it is the poor instrument of a good cause.

The paymaster fell sick. A young subaltern was acting for him. My sergeant pal tipped me off. As I have said, I was an old soldier with all that that implies. He marched me up to the officer, already more or less at sea about his new duties. I asked for money. He was aware of my history but not of the tangle I was in:

"How much?"

I wondered how much the traffic would bear.

"Twenty quid, sir," I ventured. He went up in the air.

"Impossible! I'll give you ten."

I O. K'd that while the words were yet warm on his lips. Fifty dollars is a great deal of money to a soldier. He gave it to me with a pa.s.s for Scotland--where I had relatives--to which I had long been ent.i.tled but which had been useless to me as long as I had no money.

I quickly gathered my cronies together and we packed into the canteen to celebrate the occasion fittingly, in the only fashion a good soldier knows, in army beer so thick and strong that the hops floated on the tops of the mess-tins. While searching for the bottom of one of these I heard the orderly shouting: "Corporal Edwards! Corporal Edwards!" The other men gathered round me in the corner, drinking, while I scrunched down so that the orderly pa.s.sed on and out still shouting my name.

I fled to the tent and was hastily getting my things together when a corporal came hot-foot saying that the officer wanted me at once. I went in, gave him my very best regimental salute and stood at attention.

"I find that you are not on the strength, corporal, and are not ent.i.tled to any money, so I'll trouble you to return that money I gave you."

"I'm sorry, sir," I said sadly, "but it's gone."

"Gone? How?"

"Debts, sir," I said firmly. "My mates have been keeping me going."