Three Times and Out Part 15

Ted said to me, so the guard could not hear, "Well, the old man has my sincere wishes--that it may be his last."

During the forenoon we were taken by rail to Meppen. The Sergeant Major came with us, but did not stay in the compartment with the guards and us. On the way the guard who had taken our photograph showed us the proof of it, and told us he would send us one, and had us write down our addresses. He must have been a photographer in civil life, for he had many splendid pictures with him, and entertained us by showing them to us. I remember one very pretty picture of his young daughter, a lovely girl of about fourteen years of age, standing under an apple-tree.

Before the Sergeant Major handed us over to the military authorities at Meppen, he told them what Edwards had said about wanting to go back to kill Germans, but he did not tell all that Edwards had said.

However, they treated us politely and did not seem to bear us any ill-will.

In the civil jail at Meppen to which we were taken, and which is a fine building with bright halls and pleasant surroundings, we were put in clean and comfortable cells. There was a bed with mattress and blankets, which in the daytime was locked up against the wall, toilet accommodations, drinking-water, chair, table, wash-basin, and comb.

It looked like luxury to us, and after a bowl of good soup I went to sleep.

I wakened the next morning much refreshed and in good spirits. The guard was polite and obliging, and when I said, "Guard, I like your place," his face broke into a friendly grin which warmed my heart.

Ted had spoken truly when he said the Germans were a "spotty race."

It is a spotty country, too, and one of the pleasant spots to us was the civil jail at Meppen.

Of course, to men who had been sleeping in beds and eating at tables and going in and out at their own pleasure, it would have been a jail; but to us, dirty, tired, hungry, red-eyed from loss of sleep, and worn with anxiety, it was not a jail--it was a haven of rest. And in the twenty-four hours that we spent there we made the most of it, for we well knew there were hard times coming!

CHAPTER XVI

THE INVISIBLE BROTHERHOOD

A special guard was sent from Vehnemoor to bring us back, and we had to leave our comfortable quarters at Meppen and go back with him.

The guard took a stout rope and tied us together, my right wrist to Edwards's left, and when we were securely roped up, he tried to enlighten us further by dancing around us, shouting and brandishing his gun, occasionally putting it against our heads and pretending he was about to draw the trigger. This was his way of explaining that he would shoot us if we didn't behave ourselves.

We tried to look back at him with easy indifference, and when he saw that he had not succeeded in frightening us, he soon ceased to try.

However, from the wicked looks he gave us, we could see that he would be glad to shoot us--if he had a reasonable excuse.

At the station in Meppen, where he took us fully an hour before train time, as we stood in the waiting-room with the guard beside us, the people came and looked curiously at us. The groups grew larger and larger, until we were the centre of quite a circle. We did not enjoy the notoriety very much, but the guard enjoyed it immensely, for was he not the keeper of two hardened and desperate men?

We noticed that the majority of the women were dressed in black. Some of them were poor, sad, spiritless-looking creatures who would make any person sorry for them; and others I saw whose faces were as hard as the men's. The majority of them, however, seemed to be quite indifferent; they showed neither hostility nor friendliness to us.

We changed cars at Leer, where on the platform a drunken German soldier lurched against us, and, seeing us tied together, offered to lend us his knife to cut the cord, but the guard quickly frustrated his kind intention.

At Oldenburg we were herded through the crowded station and taken out on the road for Vehnemoor, the guard marching solemnly behind us. He knew we had no firearms, and we were tied together, but when Ted put his free hand in his pocket to find some chocolate, as we walked along, the guard screamed at him in fear. He seemed to be afraid we would in some way outwit him.

But he was quite safe from us; not that we were afraid of either him or his gun, for I think I could have swung suddenly around on him and got his gun away from him, while Edwards cut our cords with the knife which was in my little package. I think he knew that we could do this, and that is why he was so frightened.

But there was one big reason which caused us to walk quietly and peaceably forward to take our punishment, and that was the river Ems, with its cruel sweep of icy water and its guarded bridges. We knew it was impossible to cross it at this season of the year, so the guard was safe. We would not resist him, but already we were planning our next escape when the flood had subsided and the summer had come to warm the water.

He had a malicious spirit, this guard, and when we came to Vehnemoor and were put in our cells, he wanted our overcoats taken from us, although the cells were as cold as outside. The Sergeant of the guard objected to this, and said we were not being punished, but only held here, and therefore we should not be deprived of our coats. Several times that night, when we stamped up and down to keep from freezing, I thought of the guard and his desire that our coats should be taken from us, and I wondered what sort of training or education could produce as mean a spirit as that! Surely, I thought, he must have been cruelly treated, to be so hard of heart--or probably he knew that the way of promotion in the German army is to show no softness of spirit.

But the morning came at last, and we were taken before the Commandant, and wondered what he would have to say to us. We were pretty sure that we had not "retained his friendship."

He did not say much to us when we were ushered into his little office and stood before his desk. He spoke, as before, through an interpreter. He looked thin and worried, and, as usual, the questions were put to us--"Why did we want to leave?" "What reason had we? Was it the food, or was it because we had to work?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Friedrichsfeld Prison-Camp in Winter]

We said it was not for either of these; we wanted to regain our freedom; we were free men, and did not want to be held in an enemy country; besides, we were needed!

We could see the Commandant had no interest in our patriotic emotions. He merely wanted to wash his hands of us, and when we said it was not on account of the poor food, or having to work, I think he breathed easier. Would we sign a paper--he asked us then--to show this? And we said we would. So the paper was produced and we signed it, after the interpreter had read and explained it to us.

In the cells the food was just the same as we had had before, in the regular prison-camp. They seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of that soup. We wondered if there was a flowing well of it somewhere in the bog. The food was no worse, but sometimes the guards forgot us.

The whole camp seemed to be running at loose ends, and sometimes the guards did not come near us for half a day, but we were not so badly off as they thought, for we got in things from our friends.

On the first morning, when we were taken to the lavatory, we saw some of the boys. They were very sorry to know we had been caught, and told us Bromley had been sent to Oldenburg a few days before, for his punishment. They also told us that the night we escaped, no alarm had been given, although the guards may have noticed the hanging wires.

Several of the boys had had the notion to go when they saw the wires down, but they were afraid of being caught. The general opinion was that the guards knew we had gone, but did not give the alarm until morning, because they had no desire to cross the bog at night.

Our method of getting stuff to the cell was simple. I wore my own overcoat to the lavatory, and hung it up inside. When I went to get it, I found another coat was hanging beside it, which I put on and wore back to the cell. In the pocket of the "other coat" I found things--bread, cheese, sardines, biscuits, and books. The next day I wore the other coat, and got my own, and found its pockets equally well supplied. It was a fellow called Iguellden, whose coat I had on alternate days. He watched for me, and timed his visit to the lavatory to suit me. Of course, the other boys helped him with the contributions. Edwards was equally well supplied. In the prison-camp the word "friend" has an active and positive quality in it which it sometimes lacks in normal times.

On the second night in the cell I suffered from the cold, for it was a very frosty night, and as the cells were not heated at all, they were quite as cold as outside.

I was stamping up and down, with my overcoat b.u.t.toned up to the neck and my hands in my pockets, trying to keep warm, when the new guard came on at seven o'clock. He shouted something at me, which I did not understand, but I kept on walking. Then he pounded on the wall with the b.u.t.t of his rifle, crying, "Schlafen! schlafen!"

To which I replied, "Nix schlafen!" (I can't sleep!)

I then heard the key turn in the door, and I did not know what might be coming.

When he came in, he blew his breath in the frosty air, and asked, "Kalt?"

I did not think he needed to take my evidence--it certainly was "kalt."

Then he muttered something which I did not understand, and went out, returning about twenty minutes later with a blanket which he had taken from one of the empty beds in the _Revier_. I knew he was running a grave risk in doing this, for it is a serious offense for a guard to show kindness to a prisoner, and I thanked him warmly. He told me he would have to take it away again in the morning when he came on guard again, and I knew he did not want any of the other guards to see it. My word of thanks he cut short by saying, "Bitte!

bitte! Ich thue es gerne" (I do it gladly); and his manner indicated that his only regret was that he could not do more.

I thought about him that night when I sat with the blanket wrapped around me, and I wondered about this German soldier. He evidently belonged to the same cla.s.s as the first German soldier I had met after I was captured, who tried to bandage my shoulder when the sh.e.l.ls were falling around us; to the same cla.s.s as good old Sank at Giessen, who, though he could speak no English, made us feel his kindness in a hundred ways; to the same cla.s.s as the German soldier who lifted me down from the train when on my way to Roulers. This man was one of them, and I began to be conscious of that invisible brotherhood which is stronger and more enduring than any tie of nationality, for it wipes out the differences of creed or race or geographical boundary, and supersedes them all, for it is a brotherhood of spirit, and bears no relation to these things.

To those who belong to it I am akin, no matter where they were born or what the color of their uniform!

Then I remembered how bitterly we resented the action of a British Sergeant Major at Giessen, who had been appointed by the German officer in charge to see after a working party of our boys. Working parties were not popular--we had no desire to help the enemy--and one little chap, the Highland bugler from Montreal, refused to go out.

The German officer was disposed to look lightly on the boy's offense, saying he would come all right, but the British Sergeant Major insisted that the lad be punished--and he was.

I thought of these things that night in the cell, and as I slept, propped up in the corner, I dreamed of that glad day when the invisible brotherhood will bind together all the world, and men will no more go out to kill and wound and maim their fellow-men, but their strength will be measured against sin and ignorance, disease and poverty, and against these only will they fight, and not against each other.

When I awakened in the morning, stiff and cramped and shivering, my dream seemed dim and vague and far away--but it had not entirely faded.

That day the guard who brought me soup was a new one whom I had not seen before, and he told me he was one of the twenty-five new men who had been sent down the night we escaped. I was anxious to ask him many things, but I knew he dared not tell me. However, he came in and sat down beside me, and the soup that he brought was steaming hot, and he had taken it from the bottom of the pot, where there were actual traces of meat and plenty of vegetables. Instead of the usual bowlful, he had brought me a full quart, and from the recesses of his coat he produced half a loaf of white bread--"Swiss bread" we called it--and it was a great treat for me. I found out afterwards that Ted had received the other half. The guard told me to keep hidden what I did not eat then, so I knew he was breaking the rules in giving it to me.

He sat with his gun between his knees, muzzle upwards, and while I ate the soup he talked to me, asking me where I came from, and what I had been doing before the war.

When I told him I had been a carpenter, he said he was a bridge-builder of Trieste, and he said, "I wish I was back at it; it is more to my liking to build things than to destroy them."

I said I liked my old job better than this one, too, whereupon he broke out impatiently, "We're fools to fight each other. What spite have you and I at each other?"

I told him we had no quarrel with the German people, but we knew the military despotism of Germany had to be literally smashed to pieces before there could be any peace, and, naturally enough, the German people had to suffer for having allowed such a tyrant to exist in their country. We were all suffering in the process, I said.

"It's money," he said, after a pause. "It is the money interests that work against human interests every time, and all the time. The big ones have their iron heel on our necks. They lash us with the whip of starvation. They have controlled our education, our preachers, government, and everything, and the reason they brought on the war is that they were afraid of us--we were getting too strong. In the last election we had nearly a majority, and the capitalists saw we were going to get the upper hand, so to set back the world, they brought on the war--to kill us off. At first we refused to fight--some of us--but they played up the hatred of England which they have bred in us; and they stampeded many of our people on the love of the Fatherland. Our ranks broke; our leaders were put in jail and some were shot; it's hard to go back on your country, too.