The Prisoners of Mainz. Alec Waugh
the line there was intense gratification, but not so much of the victory-lust that must have inflamed them in the early months of the war, but of the weariness that four years had brought, and of the thought that the close of so much misery was near. Actual successes (so it appeared) were only the means to an end—it was peace that mattered.
All this was very different from what I had expected. On the way to Battalion Headquarters I had visioned an inquisitional cross-examination. I had expected to be questioned by some fierce-jawed general, who would demand the secrets of the General Staff, which I should heroically refuse. Then he would call for the thumbscrew and the rack, for the cat-o’-nine-tails and the red-hot iron. “Will you speak now?” he would hiss. But I should remain as ever steadfastly loyal. The entire scenic panorama of the Private of the Buffs had swept before my eye; only a spasm of optimism had changed the crisis. Just at the moment when I was being led out to be shot, the general would suddenly relent. His voice would shake, and a quiver would run down his massive frame.
“No, no!” he would say, with out-stretched hand. “Spare him! He’s only a boy, and besides he’s a soldier and, damn it! that’s all that I am myself.”
Actuality, however, refused to reflect the Lyceum stage. The man with the records viewed my presence with complete equanimity.
“Oh, well,” he said, “it’s no good my asking you any questions. You’d be sure to answer them wrong, and besides, I don’t think you could tell me so very much. Let’s see, you’re in the—— Division, aren’t you? Well, you’ve got the following battalions with you.”
And he proceeded to give gratuitous information on the most intricate points of organisation and establishment, all the hundred and one little things that had been so laboriously tabulated before the Sandhurst exams., and had afterwards been so speedily forgotten. He knew the number of stretcher-bearers in a battalion, the number of G.S. wagons at brigade, and the quantity of red tabs at division. Any one possessing a quarter of his knowledge could have had a staff appointment for the asking.
“Not bad,” he laughed.
It was now two o’clock in the afternoon, and since the barrage had opened at three in the morning, none of us had sat down for a moment. We began to entertain hopes of lunch.
“Where are we bound for?” I asked.
“Douai.”
“But we don’t march there to-day, do we?”
“If you can,” he said cheerfully. “But it’s about twenty kilos, and by the time you’ve got to Vitry you probably won’t be sorry to have a rest.”
The prospect of a twenty-kilometre march along the unspeakable French roads was anything but encouraging. It was drizzling slightly, and there seemed no likelihood of getting any food. In a sad silence we waited, while the scattered groups of prisoners were collected into a party sufficiently large to be moved off together.
Proceedings were at this point considerably delayed by a company sergeant-major of the Blankshires who had spent his last moments of liberty near the rum jar; and under its influence he could not rid himself of the idea that he was still in charge of a parade. Nothing would induce him to fall in in the ranks. He persisted in standing on a bank, from which he directed operations in bucolic spasms, meanwhile treating the Germans with the benevolent patronage that he had been wont to display before the newly-joined subaltern. It was the one flash of humour that that grey afternoon provided.
At last enough stragglers had dribbled in, six officers and about a hundred and twenty men, and the march back began.
Nothing could exceed the depression of that evening. The rain began to fall heavily, and through its dim sheets peered the mournful eyes of ruined villages. We marched in silence; Vis-en-Artois, Dury, Torquennes, one by one they were passed, the landmarks we had once picked out from the Monchy heights. A stage of exhaustion had been reached when movement became mechanical. For twelve hours we had had no food, and no rest for at least sixteen, and to this physical weariness was added the depression that the bleak French landscape never fails to evoke—the grey stretches of rolling ground unrelieved by colour; the dead-straight roads lined by tree-stumps, the broken homesteads; and to all this was again added the cumulative helplessness that the events of the day had roused; the knowledge of the ignominy of one’s position, and the uncertainty of what was to come.
Gradually the succession of broken houses yielded to whole but deserted villages; and these woke even more the sense of loneliness, of nostalgia. Formerly, on the way back from the line, there was nothing so cheering as to see through the night the first signs of civilisation. Then they were to the imagination as kindly hands welcoming it back to the joys from which it had been exiled. But now the shadowy arms of a distant windmill only served to increase the feeling of banishment and separation. Behind us we could hear the dull roll of guns, we could see the flares of the Verey lights curving against the sky; and these seemed nearer happiness than the untouched barns.
At last towards ten o’clock we reached Vitry and were herded into an open cage. The whole surface of it was a liquid slime, round which men were moving, trying to keep warm. Sleep there was impossible. But at any rate there was something to eat, a cup of coffee, a quarter of a loaf of bread. The German officer received us as a hotel-keeper receives guests for whom he has no beds.
“I am very sorry, gentlemen,” he said; “but you’re only here for one night. But I think I might be able to find you a little room in the hut for the wounded.”
And so tired were we that there was pleasure in the mere prospect of a roof; and on a floor covered with lousy straw we passed the night in snatches of sleep, disturbed every moment by the tossing of cramped limbs, and by the presence of muddy boots driven against one’s face, and brawny Highlanders sprawling across one’s chest. But in that state of exhaustion these troubles were remote—for a while at any rate we could be still; and in the waking moments there lay no venom even in the recurring thought that on the next morning we should have to begin our march afresh.
§ 2
At Douai we spent four days of incorrigible prolixity in a small house behind the bank. There was absolutely nothing to do. We had no books: we could not write. There was no chess-board, and the only pack of cards was two aces short. All we could do was to sleep spasmodically, and try not to remember that we were hungry.
It was an impossible task. There was nothing else to think about. There was no chance of forgetting how little we had had for breakfast. Slowly we dragged from meal to meal.
For breakfast we got a cup of coffee made from chestnuts, and an eighth of a loaf of bread. For lunch there was a bowl of vegetable soup. For supper another cup of coffee, and another eighth of a loaf. Each morning there was an infinitesimal issue of jam. That comprised our entire ration.
We also had nothing to smoke.
There was nothing for it but to lie on our beds, with every road of thought leading to the same gate. One remembered the most minute details of dinners enjoyed on leave. A steaming array of visionary dishes passed continually before the eyes. One thought of the tins of unwanted bully stacked at the foot of dugouts. And for myself there was the bitter recollection of three untouched parcels that I had received on the eve of capture.
“To think of it,” I said, “a whole haggis, two cakes, four tins of salmon!”
“Appalling!” echoed the others.
“And to think that the Jerrys have got it!”
“Don’t talk about it, man; let’s forget.”
But there was no escape.
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