A Captive at Carlsruhe and Other German Prison Camps. Joseph Levinger Lee
necessitous directions—one of the privileges and compensations of camp life.
You pass your bread ration to the recently arrived officer who is your neighbour at dinner. “Do you care to have this bread, old chap? I have plenty.” He is an Australian, and there is considerably over six foot of him to be fed. He gives a gulp and a gasp now. “My God,” he says, “I thought I wasn’t to be able to say ‘Yes’ quick enough!”
I received my first parcel after two months of captivity. One officer, after the lapse of many barren moons, received twenty-six packets—an entire waggon load—at one time! Give me neither poverty nor riches!
Christmas at Carlsruhe
On Christmas Day, the Germans, if they could not give us peace on earth, probably made effort at an expression of goodwill even to Gefangenen! Dinner, at all events, consisted of soup, potatoes, an ounce or two of meat, one pound of eating apples, and a quarter of a litre of red wine—decidedly a red litre day! Christmas trees were raised and decorated in the salon d’appel; the Camp Commandant gave gifts to all the orderlies; a raffle, organized by the French officers, took place, when I was so fortunate as to secure a bar of chocolate, and there was a further distribution of apples at night, the gifts of La Croix Rouge, Geneva. I have probably not eaten on one day so many apples of uncertain ripeness since last I robbed an orchard as a boy.
In the chapel the Lieutenant—a layman—who customarily took the Anglican services, read the hymn from Milton’s “Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” and several carols were sung. I may say that all such services concluded with the lusty singing of a verse of “God Save the King.”
THE CAMP COMMANDANT.
Roll-call in the morning was at ten; in the evening at 8.45; lights out at nine o’clock. I shared a hut with seven other officers, three of them aviators, who had all, like Lucifer, son of the morning, fallen to earth violently and from varying altitudes. On New Year’s Eve we blanketed our windows, kept lights burning, and at midnight drank a modest glass of port to the coming year.
Our scale of dietary not conducing to exuberance of spirits, or urging to violent exercises, most of the officers spent a considerable part of these short winter days in reading or in card-playing. As unofficial limner to the very cosmopolitan camp, my pencil was kept continually sharpened in effort to capture the varying characteristics of some seventeen different nationalities.
One day I found the Commandant looking over my shoulder. He was keenly interested, suggested that he might give me a sitting, and reverted several times to the question of price. Finally I hinted that while I could not dream of accepting monetary recompense, he could, if he cared to be so complaisant, connive at my escape by way of part payment!
No one, I believe, ever escaped from Carlsruhe Camp, though various efforts were made by tunnelling. To make exit by a more direct method three high palisades and barbed wire fences had to be scaled, and that in almost certain view of numerous sentries without and within. Sitting by the barbed wire in a remote part of the court, a Posten outside would open a little slit in the paling and turn upon me an eye which was alone visible, rolling round watchfully, and with much of the effect of the Eye Omnipotent with which we were awed in boyish days.
We saw and heard little of the life of the surrounding town. Now and then a housemaid would shake a cover or a cushion from a window in one of the overlooking houses, or the Hausfrau herself might gaze gloomily forth. One night after we had retired to bed, and certainly at an hour not far from midnight, we heard what appeared to be a quartette of girls singing outside in the street. We flung open the windows and listened with vast pleasure to a very beautiful rendering of what may have been an Easter hymn; possibly a more pagan chant to the Goddess of Love.
A GAME OF CARDS.
Sometimes, of an afternoon, one would hear from the other side of the palisade the sound of marching men—a sound as seemingly resolute and relentless as the progression of Fate. Sometimes came the playful and laughing cry of a little child. One day as I read and mused in “Rotten Row,” two schoolboys, doubtless home for the week-end, and at all events perched holiday-wise upon the roof of an hotel, made their presence known to me in pleasant and friendly fashion by a cheerful whistle. Having attracted my attention, they proceeded with true boyish humour and with eloquent turnings of the head, to invite me to a companionship upon the roof!
On a June evening, walking with a French Commandant, and endeavouring to recount to him in French one of the fables of La Fontaine, we were brought to a pause by what was a wistful picture to us at one of the overlooking windows—a father, a mother, and sweet little girl, enjoying the quiet twilight hour together. The Commandant, when we had resumed our walk—which we did whenever we were discovered—confided to me that he had three boys, of ages gently graduated, and that the youngest, Michael, was very sad because he had not seen his father for so long a time.
FUNERAL OF A PRISONER OF WAR
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