World's War Events Volume II Part 18

There was one building for the French prisoners, one for the Russians, and one for the British and Canadian contingent. Barbed wire entanglements surrounded the camp and there were sentries with drawn bayonets everywhere.

[Sidenote: Heavy work and slender rations.]

We were greeted with considerable interest by the other prisoners. There were about two hundred of our men there and all of them seemed in bad shape. They had been subjected to the heaviest kind of work on the slenderest rations and were pretty well worn out.

[Sidenote: A strike for safeguards.]

Some of us were selected for the mine and some were told off for c.o.ke making, which, as we soon learned, was sheer unadulterated h.e.l.l. I was selected for the c.o.ke mine and put in three days at it--three days of smarting eyes and burning lungs, of aching and weary muscles. Then my chum, Billy Flanagan, was buried under an avalanche of falling coal and killed. There were no safeguards in the mine and the same accident might occur again at any time. So we struck.

[Sidenote: Kept at "attention" thirty-six hours.]

The officers took it as a matter of course. We were lined up and ordered to stand rigidly at "attention." No food was served, not even a gla.s.s of water was allowed us. We stood there for thirty-six hours. Man after man fainted from sheer exhaustion. When one of us dropped he was dragged out of the ranks to a corner, where a bucket of water was thrown over him, and, as soon as consciousness returned, he was yanked to his feet and forced to return to the line. All this time sentries marched up and down and if one of us moved he got a jab with the b.u.t.t end of the gun. Every half hour an officer would come along and bark out at us:

"Are you for work ready now?"

Finally, when some of our fellows were on the verge of insanity, we gave in in a body.

[Sidenote: Awakened at 4 a. m.]

[Sidenote: Turnip soup the chief article of diet.]

After that things settled down into a steady and dull routine. We were routed out at 4 o'clock in the morning. The sentries would come in and beat the b.u.t.ts of their rifles on the wooden floor and roar "Raus!" at the top of their voices. If any sleep-sodden prisoners lingered a second, they were roughly hauled out and kicked into active obedience.

Then a cup of black coffee was served out to us and at 5 o'clock we were marched to the mines. There was a dressing room at the mine where we stripped off our prisoners' garb and donned working clothes. We stayed in the mines until 3.30 in the afternoon and the "staggers"--our pet name for the foremen--saw to it that we had a busy time of it. Then we changed back into our prison clothes and marched to barracks, where a bowl of turnip soup was given us and a half pound of bread. We were supposed to save some of the bread to eat with our coffee in the morning. Our hunger was so great, however, that there was rarely any of the bread left in the morning. At 7 o'clock we received another bowl of turnip soup and were then supposed to go to bed.

If it had not been for the parcels of food that we received from friends at home and from the Red Cross we would certainly have starved. We were able to eke out our prison fare by carefully husbanding the food that came from the outside.

[Sidenote: Citizen miners also complain about food.]

The citizens working in the mines when I first arrived were mostly middle-aged. Many were quite venerable in appearance and of little actual use. They were willing enough to work and work hard; but they complained continually about the lack of food.

That was the burden of their conversation, always, food--bread, b.u.t.ter, potatoes, sc.h.i.n.ken (ham)! They were living on meager rations and the situation grew steadily worse. The people that I worked with were in almost as bad a plight as we prisoners of war. In the course of a few months I could detect sad changes in them.

[Sidenote: German miners also severely disciplined.]

The German miners were quite as much at the mercy of the officers as we were. Discipline was rigid and they were "strafed" for any infraction of rules; that is, they were subjected to cuts in pay. Lateness, laziness, or insubordination were punished by the deduction of so many marks from their weekly earnings, and all on the say-so of the "stagger" in charge of the squad. At a certain hour each day an official would come around and hand each civilian a slip of paper. I asked one of my companions what it was all about.

[Sidenote: No bread tickets for those who do not work.]

"Bread tickets," he explained. "If they don't turn up for work, they don't get their bread tickets and have to go hungry."

The same rule applied to the women who worked around the head of the mine, pushing carts and loading the coal. If they came to work, they received their bread tickets; if they failed to turn up, the little mouths at home would go unfed for a day.

[Sidenote: German women at the mines.]

I often used to stop for a moment or so on my way to or from the pit head and watch these poor women at work. Some of them went barefoot, but the most of them wore wooden shoes. They appeared to be pretty much of one cla.s.s, uneducated, dull, and just about as ruggedly built as their men. They seemed quite capable of handling the heavy work given them.

There were exceptions, however. Here and there among the gray-clad groups I could pick out women of a slenderer mold. These were women of refinement and good education who had been compelled to turn to any cla.s.s of work to feed their children. Their husbands and sons were at the front or already killed.

The food restrictions caused bitterness among all the mine workers.

There were angry discussions whenever a group of them got together. For several days this became very marked.

"There's going to be trouble here," my friend, the English Tommy, told me. "These people say their families are starving. They will strike one of these days."

The very next day, as we marched up to work in the dull gray of the early morning, we found noisy crowds of men and women around the buildings at the mine. A ring of sentries had been placed all around.

[Sidenote: Bread strike of the citizen miners.]

"Strike's on! There's a bread strike all through the mining country!"

was the whispered news that ran down the line of prisoners. We were delighted, because it meant that we would have a holiday. The authorities did not dare let us go into the mines with the civilians out; they were afraid we might wreck it. So we were marched back to camp and stayed there until the strike was over.

[Sidenote: The strikers win and new rules are formulated.]

The strike ended finally and the people came back to work, jubilant. The authorities had given in for two reasons, as far as we could judge. The first was the dire need of coal, which made any interruption of work at the mines a calamity. The second was the fact that food riots were occurring in many parts and it was deemed wise to placate the people.

But the triumph of the workers was not complete. The very next day we noticed signs plastered up in conspicuous places with the familiar word "Verboten" in bold type at the top. One of our fellows who could read German edged up close enough to see one of the placards.

"There won't be any more strikes," he informed us. "The authorities have made it illegal for more than four civilians to stand together at any time or talk together. Any infringement of the rule will be jail for them. That means no more meetings."

There was much muttering in the mine that day, but it was done in groups of four or less. I learned afterward, when I became sufficiently familiar with the language and with the miners themselves to talk with them, that they bitterly resented this order.

[Sidenote: Strike leaders disappear from the mine.]

I found that the active leaders in the strike shortly afterward disappeared from the mine. Those who could possibly be pa.s.sed for military service were drafted into the army. This was intended as an intimation to the rest that they must "be good" in future. The fear of being drafted for the army hung over them all like a thunder cloud. They knew what it meant and they feared it above everything.

When I first arrived at the mine there were quite a few able-bodied men and boys around sixteen and seventeen years of age at work there.

Gradually they were weeded out for the army. When I left none were there but the oldest men and those who could not possibly qualify for any branch of the service.

[Sidenote: Talks with the German miner.]

In the latter stages of my experience at the mine I was able to talk more or less freely with my fellow workers. A few of the Germans had picked up a little English. There was one fellow who had a son in the United States and who knew about as much English as I knew German, and we were able to converse. If I did not know the "Deutsch" for what I wanted to say, he generally could understand it in English. He was continually making terrific indictments of the German Government, yet he hated England to such a degree that he would splutter and get purple in the face whenever he mentioned the word. However, he could find it in his heart to be decent to isolated specimens of Englishmen.

I first got talking with Fritz one day when the papers had announced the repulse of a British attack on the western front.

[Sidenote: Fritz's view of British attacks.]

"It's always the same. They are always attacking us," he cursed. "Of course, it's true that we repulse them. They are but English and they can't break the German army. But how are we to win the war if it is always the English who attack?"

"Do you still think Germany can win?" I asked.

"No!" He fairly spat at me. "We can't beat you now. But you can't beat us! This war will go on until your pig-headed Lloyd George gives in."

"Or," I suggested gently, "until your pig-headed Junker Government gives in."

"They never will!" he said, a little proudly, but sadly too. "Every man will be killed in the army--my two sons, all--and we will starve before it is all over!"

[Sidenote: The Germans no longer hope for a big victory.]

The German citizens, in that section at least, had given up hope of being able to score the big victory that was in every mind when the war started. What the outcome would be did not seem to be clear to them. All they knew was that the work meant misery for them, and that, as far as they could see, this misery would continue on and on indefinitely. They had lost confidence in the newspapers. It was plain to be seen that the stereotyped rubber-stamped kind of official news that got into the papers did not satisfy them. Many's the time I heard bitter curses heaped upon the Hobenzollerns by lips that were flabby and colorless from starvation.

[Sidenote: News of unrestricted submarine warfare.]