The Escape of a Princess Pat Part 3

The other half of the regiment lay in support two hundred yards away in Belle-waarde Wood and in front of the chateau and lake of that name, where my draft had lain on the fourth. I made a dash for it.

What with the mud and the many sh.e.l.l holes, the going was bad. I was indistinctly aware of a great deal of promiscuous shooting at me, but most distinctly of one German who shot at me about ten times in as many yards and from quite close range. I saw I could not make it. I flung myself into a Johnson hole, and as soon as I had caught my breath, scrambled out again and raced for the trench I had just left.

I was by this time unarmed, having flung my rifle away to further my flight, notwithstanding which another German shot at me as I went toward him.

As I landed in the trench an angry voice shouted something I could not understand. And I scrambled to my feet in time to see a German sullenly lower his rifle from the level of my body at the command of a big black-bearded officer.

CHAPTER VI

PRISONERS

A German Version of a Soldier's Death!--The Courage of c.o.x--Robbing the Helpless--Water on the End of a Bayonet--The Curious Case of Scott--Prussian Bullies--Why I Was Covered with a Fine Sweat.

The Germans were by this time in full possession of this slice of trench, and for the next few minutes the officer was kept busy pulling his men off their victims. Like slavering dogs they were.

He did not have his lambs any too well in hand, however. O.B. Taylor, a lovable character in Number One Company, came to his end here. The Germans ordered him and Hookie Walker to go back down the trench. He had no sooner turned to do so than a German shot him from behind and from quite close, so that it blew the groin completely out, making a terrible hole. We could not tie up so bad a wound and he bled to death. Hookie Walker remained with him to the last, five hours later, when he said: "I'm going to sleep boys," and did so. Fortunately, he did not suffer. And all the others except young c.o.x were equally fortunate, since they were murdered outright.

Taylor's was the most calculated of all the murders we had witnessed and outdid even those of the wounded because the excitement of the fight was two hours old and he was doing the bidding of his captors at the time. The killing of those who resisted was of course quite in order. Why he was killed while Walker was left unharmed and at his side to the last we did not know and could only credit to a whimsy of our captors. No punishment was visited upon his murderer or upon any of them so far as we were able to learn.

Upon my later return to Canada I found that Taylor's sister there had received a letter from a German officer enclosing a letter addressed to her which had been found on her brother's body, together with three war medals and a Masonic ring. The latter was the key to the incident since the officer also claimed to have been a Mason. In his letter this officer said that her brother had met a soldier's death!

Some said that our friendly officer was not a German but an Irishman.

I doubted that but it may have been so, for it was true that his speech contained no trace of the accent which is usually a.s.sociated with a German's English speech. His was that of an English gentleman.

And to him we undoubtedly owed our wretched lives that day.

I in particular have good cause to be grateful. A German, all of six foot four, who swung a tremendously broad headsman's axe with a curved blade, tried several times to get at me. Each time the officer stopped him. Still he persisted. He apparently saw no one else and kept his eye fastened on me with deadly intention in it. He pushed aside the others, Prussians and prisoners alike; he whirled the shining blade high above a face lit up with savage exultation, terrible to see, and which reflected the sensual revelling of his heated brain in the b.l.o.o.d.y orgy ahead. As I followed the incredibly rapid motions of the blade, my blood turned to water. My limbs refused to act and my mind travelled back over the years to a little Scottish village where I had been used to sit in the dark corners of the shoemaker's shop, listening to him and others of the old 2nd Gordons recount their terrible tales of the hill men on the march to Kandahar with "Bobs."

And now I felt that same tremendous sensation of fear which used to send me trembling to my childish pallet in the croft, peering fearfully through the darkness for the oiled body of a naked Pathan with his corkscrew kris. Terror swept over me like a springtime flood.

He saw no one else. His eye fastened on me in crudest hate. But as he stood over me with feet spread wide and the circle of his axe's swing broadening for the finale, the thread of rabbit-like mesmerism broke and I sprang nimbly aside as the blade buried itself deep in the mud wall I had been cowering against. I endeavoured to dodge him by putting some of my fellow prisoners between us. No use. He followed me, shoving and cursing his way among them, swinging his axe. My hair stood on end and I felt rather critical of their much-vaunted Prussian discipline. Another endeavoured to bayonet Charlie Scarfe. The officer at last stopped them both.

Our captors belonged to the Twenty-first Prussian Regiment and were, so far as we knew, the first of their kind we had been up against, all previous comers on our front having been Bavarians and latterly of the army group of Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria--"Rupie," we called him. They wore the baggy grey clothes and clumsy looking leather top boots of the German infantryman. The spiked _pickelhauben_ was conspicuous by its absence and was, we well knew, a thing only of billets and of "sw.a.n.k" parades. In its place was the soft pancake trench cap with its small colored b.u.t.ton in the front.

The enemy were armed for the most part with pioneers' bayonets, as well adapted by reason of their saw edges for sticking flesh and blood as for sawing wood; and, if for the former, an unnecessarily cruel weapon, since it was bound to stick in the body and badly lacerate it internally in the withdrawal; especially if given a twist.

The trench front had been about-faced since its change of ownership and the Germans were already casting our dead out of the shattered trench, both in front and behind, and in many cases using them to stop the gaps in the parapet; so that they now received the bullets of their erstwhile comrades.

We were ordered up and out at the back of the parapet and then made to lie there. The German artillery had ceased. We had none. Odd shots from the remnant of our fellows still hanging on in the supports continued to come over, but none of us were hit. In all probability, they withheld their fire when they saw what was afoot. Some German snipers in a farmhouse at the rear were less considerate, but fortunately failed to hit us.

Later we were ordered to take our equipment off and those who had coats, to shed them. We did not see the latter again and missed them horribly in the rain of that day. Two of the Prussians "frisked" us for our tobacco, cigarettes, knives and other valuables.

This was in bitter contrast to our own treatment of prisoners under similar conditions. True, we had always searched them but had invariably returned those little trinkets and comforts which to a soldier are so important. And I think our men had always showered them with food and tobacco.

We were then marched to the rear, with the exception of one, who, by permission of the officer, remained with the dying Taylor.

There were ten of us all told. I have only heard of a few others who were captured that day. Roberts is still in Germany and Todeschi has been exchanged and is now in Toronto. The latter lay with a boy of the machine-gun crew for a couple of days in a dug-out, both badly wounded. A German stumbled on to them. They pleaded for water. The German said, "I'll give you water" and bayoneted the boy as he lay. He raised his weapon so that the blood of his comrade dripped on Todeschi's face.

"All right," Todeschi cried in German, "kill me too, but first give me water, you----"

The German lowered his rifle in amazement: "What, you schwein, you speak the good German? Where did you learn it?"

"In your schools. For Christ's sake--give me water--and kill me."

"What! You live with us and then do this? Schwein!"

"All right, I will give you water and I will not kill you; just to show you how well we can treat a prisoner."

Todeschi was then taken to the field dressing station where according to his own account his mangled leg was amputated without the use of any anesthetic. But that may have been because in such a time of stress they had none. Later he was exchanged.

I met Scott in the prison camp a few days later and he told his tale.

It appears that in the confusion of the earlier fighting he had become separated from the regiment, became lost and eventually floundered into an English battalion. He reported to the officer commanding the trench and told his story. The officer had no idea where the Patricias lay and so ordered Scott to remain with them until such time as an inquiry might establish the whereabouts of his regiment.

They were captured, but under less exciting circ.u.mstances than occurred in our own case. And the Germans had word that there was a Canadian amongst these English troops. It was one of the first things mentioned. They did not say how they had acquired their information, but shouted out a request for the man to stand forth. When no one complied, they questioned each man separately, asking him if he was a Canadian or knew aught of one in that trench.

They all lied: "No." The Germans were so certain that they again went over each man in turn, examining him.

Scott was at the end of the line. He began to cut the Canadian b.u.t.tons off his coat and to remove his badges. Several men near by a.s.sisted and replaced them with such of their own as they could spare; each man perhaps contributing a b.u.t.ton. They had no thread nor time to use it if they had, so tacked the b.u.t.tons into place by all manner of makeshifts, such as broken ends of matches thrust through holes punched in the cloth; anything to hold the b.u.t.tons in place and tide the hunted Scott over the inspection. He pa.s.sed. The Germans were quite furious.

Scott and his companions could only guess at the cause of this strange conduct, but presumed that the Canadian was wanted for special treatment of an unfavorable, if not of a final nature.

To return to our own case:

About the middle of the afternoon we were herded by our guards into a shallow depression a short distance in the rear of the trench and there told to lie down. The officer and his men returned to the trench. Until we were taken back to the trench at six we were continually sniped at by the Germans in the captured trench. We had no recourse but to make ourselves as small as possible, which we did. And whether owing to the fact that the hollow we were lying in prevented our being actually within the range of the enemy vision, or whether they were merely playing cat and mouse with us, I do not know, but none were hit. Young c.o.x suffered stoically. His mangled hand had become badly fouled with dirt and filth, and the ragged bones protruded through the broken flesh. So, in a quiet interval between the sniping periods we hurriedly sawed the shattered stump of his hand off with our clasp knives and bound it up as best we could. It was not a nice task, for him nor us, but he did not so much as grunt during the operation. The nearest he came to complaining was when he asked me to let him lay his hand across my body to ease it, at the same time remarking: "I guess when they get us to Germany they'll let us write, and I'll be able to write mother and then she'll not know I've lost my hand." He was a most valiant and faithful soldier.

The perpetual rain and mist peculiar to that low-lying land added to our wretched condition and increased the pain of the wounds that most of us suffered from.

At six o'clock our guards returned and curtly ordered us to our feet.

We were taken back to the trench, where our officer friend had us searched again. Here for the first time my two corporal's stripes were noticed and a mild excitement ensued. "Korporal! Korporal!" they exclaimed and crowded up the better to inspect me and verify the report, and jabbering "_Ja! Ja!_" Apparently a captured corporal was a rarity. Strangely enough, they paid little or no attention to the sergeant of our party, although he had the three stripes of his rank up.

As I happened to be in the lead of our party and the first to enter the trench, I was the first man searched and so had to await the examination of the others. Worn out by the events of the day and the wound I had received early in the morning from a sh.e.l.l fragment, I fell asleep against the wall of the trench where I sat.

I was awakened by a poke in the ribs from Scarfe. "Time to shift, mate."

I rose to my feet and, following the instructions of the officer, led the way along the trench. The Germans had already, with their usual industry, gotten the trench into some sort of shape again, with the parapet shifted over to the other side and facing Belle-waarde Wood.

And everywhere along its length I noticed the bodies of our dead built into it to replace sandbags while others lay on the parados at the rear.

It was not nice. The faces of men we had known and had called comrade looked at us now in ghastly disarray from odd sections of both walls.

Already they were taking a brick-like shape from the weight of the filled bags on top of them. In places the legs and arms protruded, brushing us as we pa.s.sed. However, this was war and quite ethical.

Naturally we had to crowd by the other occupants of the trench. And each took a poke at us as we went by, some with their bayonets, saying: "Verd.a.m.nt Englander" and: "Englander Schwein,"--pigs of English. Also quite a number of them spoke English after a fashion.

There was in these men none of the soldier's usual tolerance or good-natured pity for an enemy who had fought well and had then succ.u.mbed to the fortunes of war. Instead, a blind and vicious rage which took no account of our helpless condition.

They cuffed us, they buffeted us, they p.r.i.c.ked us cruelly with their saw bayonets and then laughed and sneered as we flinched and dodged awkwardly aside. Then they cursed us.

Shortly, we were led into the presence of a man whom I shall remember if I live to be a hundred. He wore gla.s.ses and on his upper lip there bloomed such a dainty moustache as is affected by "Little Willie" as Tommy calls the German Crown Prince. He had the eye of a rat. It snapped so cruel a hate that one's blood stopped.

He seized me by the right shoulder with his left hand: "You Corporal!

You Corporal!" as though that fact of itself condemned me, and at the same time tugging at his holster until he found his revolver, which he placed against my temple. Then and there I fervently prayed that he would pull the trigger and end it all. I was fed up. The all-day bombardment, the last terrible slaughter of helpless men, the rain and cold, combining with the pain of the raw wound in my side, had gotten on my nerves. With the revolver still at my head I turned to Scarfe: "They're going to do us in, Charlie. I only hope they'll do it proper.

None of that bayonet stuff. Bullets for me." Already the Prussians were crowding round us threateningly again, with their saw-edged bayonets ready, some fixed in the rifle, others clasped short, like daggers, for such a butchering as they had had earlier in the afternoon, when I had been so nearly axed.