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Escaping Club

<hr style="width: 65%;" />[139] <h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> <h3>SHORT RATIONS AND MANY RIOTS</h3> The weather became colder and colder, and for the next month we seldom had less than 27° of frost at night, and in the day time anything up to 20° in spite of the fairly frequent appearance of the sun. The countryside was covered by a few inches of snow, now in the crisp and powdery condition seldom seen except in Switzerland and the colder countries. After the experience of Medlicott and myself it was generally agreed in the fort that escape was almost impossible, unless a very considerable start could be obtained; so the greater number of us settled down to face the not altogether pleasant domestic problems of Fort 9. Our allowance of coal was found to be quite insufficient to keep the room tolerably warm. It was the same in every room in the fort. Repeated requests for an increased allowance having as usual had no effect, we proceeded to tear down all the available woodwork in the fort and in our rooms and burn it in the stoves. We lived literally in a solid block of ice. Just before the long frost had set in, the ground above and round our rooms had been soaking wet, and the walls and floors had been streaming with moisture. Then came the frost, and everything was[140] frozen solid, and outside in the passage an icy blast blew continually, and in places beneath broken ventilators a few inches of frozen snow lay for weeks unthawed inside the fort. That passage was, without exception, the coldest place I have ever known. Down the walls of each of our rooms ran a flue in the stonework, intended to drain the earth above the rooms. For over six weeks there was a solid block of ice in it from top to bottom, in spite of the fact that the flue was in the common wall of two living-rooms. We lived continually in our great coats and all the warm underclothes we possessed; we ourselves seldom, and our allies never, opened windows, and we pasted up cracks and holes; but still we remained cold, and crouched all day round our miserable stoves. Müller's exercises, skipping, and wood, coal, and oil stealing were recreations and means of keeping warm and keeping up our spirits. On top of this came the famine. For the last few months we had been so well and regularly supplied with food from home that we had never thought of eating the very unpalatable food given us by the Germans, and had at length come to an agreement whereby they gave us full pay—in my case 100 marks per month—and no longer supplied us with food. Up to the time of this agreement they had deducted 42 marks monthly, and this extra money was quite useful. Some time before Christmas we were warned that there would be a ten days' stoppage of our parcels in order to allow of the more rapid delivery of the German Christmas mail to their troops. In consequence we had all written home asking that double parcels should[141] be sent us for the two weeks preceding Christmas. However, Christmas passed and parcels came with almost the same regularity as they had always done. Christmas festivities, and the knowledge that double parcels were on their way, induced us to draw rather heavily on our reserve store. Then came the stoppage. Daily we looked anxiously for the parcel cart which never came. Reduced to our last half-dozen tins of food among six men we went onto quarter rations, helped out from a large supply of stolen potatoes. At length we had nothing whatever to eat but our daily ration of bread and almost unlimited potatoes. No butter, no salt, no pepper. It would not have mattered very much in warm weather, but in those conditions of cold and discomfort in which we were living, hunger was rather hard to bear. A diet consisting entirely of butterless and saltless potatoes in various forms became after three or four days extremely tedious. It is quite impossible to eat enough of them to satisfy one's hunger. After a gorge of potatoes one is distended but still hungry. I forget how long the famine lasted—about ten days, I think, though I remember very well the arrival of a cartload of parcels which relieved the situation just when things began to get serious. It arrived on a Saturday, and the Germans said that they would be given out on Monday, as a certain time was necessary for sorting and registering the parcels. To starving men this delay was quite intolerable, and the prisoners adopted such a threatening attitude that the Commandant considered it wisest to give out a small portion of the parcels to keep us going till Monday.[142] Of course we might have asked the Germans to supply us with food when we were short, but I don't think such a course was contemplated seriously by anybody. Perhaps it may be considered that the kindly Germans, knowing that their prisoners were nearing starvation, should have insisted on supplying us with food. But the Germans of Fort 9 were not accustomed to confer favors on us—if they had offered them we should have refused—and I have no doubt that they considered a little hunger very good for us. So much for the famine; our parcels for the rest of the time I was in Germany arrived in large quantities. About this time, on the strength of the convention agreed to between the English and the German governments, we obtained from the very unwilling Germans the privilege of going on walks for an hour or two a week on parole. For the rest of the time I was at Fort 9 the parties of English and Russian prisoners, but not French, as I believe they had no such convention with the Germans, exercised this privilege once and sometimes twice a week, accompanied by an unarmed German N.C.O., who under these circumstances sometimes became quite human. The walks were very dull indeed, as the country round the fort is very uninteresting. However, it was certainly a relief to get out of the place every now and then. The only other way in which we ever got out of the fort legitimately was when we were sent for from Ingolstadt for preliminary inquiries concerning a court-martial, or to make a statement concerning the vigilance of the sentry[143] past whom we had escaped. We always did our best to defend the unfortunate sentries, but I am afraid that they almost invariably were heavily punished. The next incident of any interest was a turbulent affair which has become known to the one-time inmates of Fort 9 as the Bojah case. As I was not involved to any great extent in this storm in a teacup, I have rather a confused idea of what happened and why it happened. I am not even sure how it started, but I believe the original cause was a very mild and commonplace theft by Medlicott. A German carpenter was putting up some shelves in one of our living-rooms when Medlicott and I entered the room. Quite on the spur of the moment Medlicott picked up the carpenter's pincers when his back was turned and handed them to me. I put them in my pocket and walked out of the room and hid them. Before the pincers were missed Medlicott also followed me out of the room. No one else in the room had noticed the theft, and naturally denied it indignantly when accused by the carpenter. Apparently the carpenter, being very angry, instantly informed the Commandant. About ten minutes later we heard a fearful row in the passage outside, and we all came out of our rooms to see the fun. In the doorway of one of the rooms was a seething, shouting mob consisting of several sentries with fixed bayonets, the Feldwebel and half a dozen prisoners, mostly French, and the Commandant. They were all shouting at the top of their voices and pushing, and the Commandant was brandishing his arms and generally behaving like an enraged maniac. What the Frenchmen were doing in[144] that room I am not quite clear, but I believe they had come into the room in which the carpenter had been after the latter had departed to report the loss of the pincers to the Commandant. When the Commandant arrived with his guard he insulted them and accused them of stealing the pincers and then ordered them back to their rooms. The Frenchmen—Kicq, Derobiere, Bojah, and a few others of the younger and more violent sort—were the last people in the world to take this sort of thing lying down; besides which they loved a row at any time for its own sake, and for once in a way they had right on their side. They denied the accusation and protested against the insults with some violence, and when ordered to their rooms by the Commandant refused to go unless they first had an apology. It is quite impossible to imagine the scene unless you realize the character of the Commandant. The one outstanding feature was his conspicuous lack of dignity and total inability to keep his temper. In his quiet moments he was an incompetent, funny bourgeois shopkeeper; when angry, as at this moment, he was a howling, raving madman. When the Frenchmen refused to move, the Commandant apparently ordered the Feldwebel to arrest them, and confused shouting followed, in the midst of which the Commandant hit the Feldwebel and, I believe, though I did not see it, also hit Bojah. There was a complete block in the doorway, and the passage was also blocked by a hand-cart, which happened to be there, and a large and cheering crowd of spectators. The sentries could not get in, and the Feldwebel and the Commandant, who were blocked in the doorway, could not move, and[145] every one continued to shout. Medlicott, who loved this sort of thing, tried to barge into the scrimmage, and I only just prevented him being struck by a bayonet. Then Kicq managed to get close to the Commandant and call him a "cochon." Two sentries effected his arrest. After that, I really don't know how things got disentangled without bloodshed, but eventually the Germans retreated amidst yells of derision, with Bojah, Kicq, and Derobiere in their midst. The English and French prisoners who had seen this affair decided that, as the Commandant's conduct had been unbecoming that of an officer, we would hold no further communication with him. Most of us were content to act up to this passively, but when Batty Smith was summoned to the office he informed the Commandant of the decision and walked out. Buckley and Medlicott also took the earliest opportunity of doing the same thing. As soon as they entered the office, Buckley delivered the following ultimatum. "Nous n'avons rien à faire avec vous parce que nous ne pouvons pas vous considérer comme un officier." They then right-about turned and marched out in military fashion, leaving the Commandant, as he himself said in his evidence at the trial, "sprachlos" with astonishment. Buckley's reason for speaking in French instead of German was that he did not wish him to be able to call any of the office staff as witness of what he had said. Soon afterwards Batty Smith was called again to the bureau, arrested, and sent to prison in another fort, where he remained in solitary confinement for over two months without any sort of trial. Buckley and Medlicott[146] were kidnapped in exactly the same way and thrown into improvised cells in the fort. Medlicott had only been in his cell for ten seconds, when he began, as usual, to think how to get out of it. Above the door was a glass window by which light entered the cell. The glass was already partially broken, so Medlicott standing on a chair smashed the rest of it and somehow managed to climb out through it. Soon afterwards Buckley also got out, and both returned to their rooms. Five minutes later the Germans placed sentries in front of the cell doors, but it was not till several hours afterwards that they found to their intense surprise that the birds had already flown. We got a good deal of amusement out of this incident; but a few days later Medlicott was sent to another fort and Buckley was shut up in Fort 9. Both remained in close solitary confinement without any sort of trial for over two months. We never saw either Derobiere or Kicq again, though I have heard from the latter since the armistice was signed. He had a series of perfectly amazing adventures and hardships, and eventually escaped successfully, after the sixth or seventh attempt, about the time of the armistice. Of all the unusual happenings in Fort 9, that which I am about to describe is perhaps the most remarkable. To steal a large iron-bound box from the Commandant's bureau would be at any time a difficult feat, but when it is considered that the only opportunity for the theft occurred in the middle of the day, and also that the box contained compasses and maps by the dozen, several cameras,[147] solidified alcohol, censored books, in fact all those things which we were most strictly forbidden to possess, it must be owned that it was an extraordinary performance. It was organized and carried out mainly by Russians with the help of a few Frenchmen. About 11.30 one morning, just after Appell, a Russian came into every room along the corridor and informed us that there would be a general search by the Germans at 12.15. We thanked him and hid all our forbidden property, for a hint of this nature was not to be taken lightly at Fort 9. We had no idea what was going to happen, and only heard a detailed account of it afterwards. When a prisoner attempts to escape and is recaptured, he is taken by the Germans into the bureau and searched, and for those articles—maps, compasses, etc.—which are taken off him he is given a receipt and the articles themselves are deposited, carefully ticketed with the owner's name, in a large iron-bound wooden box which is kept in the depot outside the fort. When, however, prisoners are removed from one camp to another, the articles belonging to those prisoners are handed to the N.C.O. in charge of their escort and are deposited in the depot of the new camp. This time two Russians were being sent to another camp, and the iron-bound box in question had been brought into the bureau so that the senior clerk could check the articles as they were handed over. The theft of this box was carried out in the following manner. Just before midday a party of Frenchmen, I believe, went into the bureau and had a violent row with the Commandant—not[148] an unusual occurrence, as I have already explained. As the row became more and more heated, other Frenchmen and Russians crowded into the bureau. A fearful scrimmage and a great deal of shouting ensued, in the midst of which a party specially detailed for the purpose carried the box unobserved out of the bureau and into our "reading room," which was only a few doors away. There men were waiting with hammers and other instruments. The lid was wrenched open and the contents turned out on to the floor. Some then fell on the box and broke and tore it into small pieces which others carried to the different rooms and burnt immediately in the stoves. Others again distributed to their owners or hid in previously prepared places the contents of the box, so that within five minutes the box itself had utterly disappeared and all its incriminating contents were in safe hiding-places. The row, which had been gradually dying down, now dissolved, and very soon afterwards the Germans discovered their loss. The bells went and we were all ordered to our rooms. Then, amid shouts of laughter from every room, two rather sullen and shamefaced Germans searched vainly for an enormous box which had only been stolen five minutes before and for which there was no possible hiding-place in any of the rooms. Most of us got back some valuable belongings. I got a compass and some maps which had been taken off me at my first escape, but the most amusing prize was my box of solidified alcohol, for which I now held two receipts from the Germans as well as the article itself! <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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