Three Times and Out Part 11

The people who sent these books will never know the pleasure they gave us! The games, too, which the Red Cross sent us were never idle, and made many a happy evening for us.

At night we had concerts, and many good plays and tableaux put on by the boys. There was a catchy French love song, "Marie," which was a great favorite with the boys. From this we began to call the Kilties "Marie," and there were several harmless fights which had this for a beginning. The Kilties had a hard time of it, and had to get another dress before they could be taken on a working party. The Germans did not consider the kilt a "decent dress" for a man.

The parcels were an endless source of delight, and I was especially fortunate in having friends who knew just what to send. Mrs. Palmer, of Plymouth, sent me bacon; Mrs. Goodrich, my sister, and Mrs.

Goodrich, Sr., of Vancouver, sent fruit-cakes; Mrs. Hill, wife of the British reservist who gave me my first drill in British Columbia, sent oatmeal, and his sisters, Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Hamer, made candy.

Lee Davison, of Trail, whose brother is now a prisoner in Germany, sent me tobacco, and so did Harold Andrews, of Trail, and Billy Newell, of Koch Siding.

The distribution of the mails was a time of thrills. One of the Sergeants called it out, while every one crowded eagerly around.

Poor Clarke, one of the brightest, merriest-hearted boys we had, seldom got a letter, but he was right on hand every time, and when there was no letter for him, would tear his hair dramatically and cry,--

"Gott strafe England."

Clarke had the good gift of making everybody laugh. I remember once seeing him patching his trousers with a Union Jack, and singing, "We'll never let the Old Flag fall!"

The German respect for the military caste was well shown in the punishment of a Russian officer who had offended them by something he had done or had not done. He was sent to our hut--as a punishment. He had a room to himself, a batman, the privilege of sending out to buy food, as much as he liked. His punishment consisted in having to live under the same roof and breathe the same air as common soldiers. He was a very good fellow, and told us many things about his country.

Incidentally we found out that his wages as a Lieutenant in the Russian Army were one hundred and fifty dollars a year!

Bromley and I had not worked at all since coming out of Strafe-Barrack. Being ring-men gave us immunity from labor. They would not let us outside of the compound. Even if we volunteered for a parcel party, the guard would cry "Weg!"--which is to say, "Go back."

This made all our time leisure time, and I put in many hours making maps, being as careful as possible not to let the guards see me. I got the maps in a variety of ways. Some of them had been smuggled in in parcels, and some of the prisoners had brought them in when they came.

A Canadian soldier, who was a clever artist, and had a room to himself where he painted pictures for some of the Germans, gave me the best one, and from these I got to know quite a lot about the country. From my last experience I knew how necessary it was to have detailed knowledge of the country over which we must travel to reach the border.

My interest in maps caused the boys to suspect that I was determined to escape, and several broached the subject to me. However, I did not wish to form an alliance with any one but Bromley. We considered two was enough, and we were determined to go together.

One day, in the late fall, when the weather was getting cold, an American, evidently connected with the Emba.s.sy, came to see us, and asked us about our overcoats. The German officers in charge of the camp treated him with scant courtesy, and evidently resented his interference. But as a result of his visit every person who did not already have a Red Cross or khaki coat got a German coat.

Just before Christmas Day we got overcoats from the Red Cross, dark blue cloth, full length and well lined. They had previously sent each of us a blanket.

The treatment of overcoats was to cut a piece right out of one sleeve, and insert a piece of yellowish-brown stuff, such as is shown in Bromley's photograph. We knew that coats were coming for us, and were particularly anxious to get them before they were disfigured with the rings which they would put on or with this band of cloth. If we could get the coats as they came from the Red Cross, they would look quite like civilian's coats, and be a great help to us when we made our next escape. Bromley and I had spent hard thinking on how we could save our coats.

Larkins, one of the boys who worked in the parcels office, watched for our overcoats, and when they came he slipped them into the stack which had been censored, and in that way we got them without having them interfered with. But even then we were confronted with a greater difficulty. The first time we wore them the guards would notice we had no rings, and that would lead to trouble. The piece of cloth on the arm was not so difficult to fix. Two of the boys whose coats were worn out gave us the pieces out of their coats, which we _sewed on_, instead of inserting. The rings had been put on in brown paint lately instead of red, and this gave Bromley an idea. We had a tin of cocoa, saved from our parcels, and with it we painted rich brown rings on our new coats. We were careful not to wear these coats, for we knew the cocoa rings were perishable, but we had our old overcoats to wear when we needed one. This saw us past the difficulty for a while.

On Christmas Day we had the privilege of boiling in the cook-house the puddings which came in our parcels, and we were given a Christmas card to send instead of the ordinary cards--that was the extent of the Christmas cheer provided for us.

Soon after Christmas there was a party of about four hundred picked out to be sent away from Giessen; the ring-men were included, and all those who had refused to work or given trouble. Bromley and I were pretty sure we should be included, and in antic.i.p.ation of the journey touched up the cocoa rings on our coats. They were disposed to flake off. I also prepared for the projected move by concealing my maps.

I put several in the pasteboard of my cap and left no trace, thanks be to the needle and thread I had bought in the army canteen, and my big one I camouflaged as a box of cigarettes. A box of Players'

Cigarettes had been sent to me, which I had not yet broken into. I carefully removed the seal, being careful to break it so that it could be put back again without detection. Then I cut my map into pieces corresponding to the size of a cigarette, and, emptying out the tobacco from a few, inserted the section of map instead, and put them carefully in with the label showing. I then closed the box and mended the band so that it looked as if it had not been broken. I felt fairly safe about this.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Christmas Card which the Giessen Prison Authorities supplied to the Prisoners]

The day came when we were to leave. Sometimes Bromley and I were on the list, sometimes we were not. We did not really know until our names were called.

Our cocoa rings were fresh and fine, and we walked out with innocent faces. I don't know why they suspected me, but the Company officer, with two soldiers, came over to me where I stood at the end of a double line. At the word from the officer, the soldiers tore off my pack, opened my coat, examined the rings on my tunic which were, fortunately, of the durable red paint, guaranteed not to crock or run. I thought for sure they would search me, which I did not fear at all, for my maps I considered safe, but I did not want them fooling around me too much, for my cocoa rings would not stand any rough treatment. I wished then I had put sugar in the cocoa to make them stick better.

But after considerable argument, they left me. Just before the officer walked away, he shook a warning finger at me and said, "Fini--dead--fertig," which was his French, English, and German for the game idea: "If you don't behave yourself, you are a dead man!"

He directed the soldiers to keep a strict watch on us, and one of them volunteered the opinion that we should have rings in our noses!

CHAPTER XIII

CELLELAGER

The attention given to me by the prison-guards would have been disconcerting to a less modest man than I am. A soldier sat with me all the way on the train. I could not lose him! He stuck to me like a shadow. When I stood up, he stood up. When I changed my seat, he changed his. And he could understand English, too, so Bromley and I could not get a word in. He seemed to me--though I suppose that was simply imagination--to be looking at my rings, and I knew my pack's string was rubbing them. I hardly knew what to do. At last I hastily removed my pack, folded my overcoat so that the rings would not show, and hung it up, but as the train lurched and rolled, I was fearful of the effect this would have on the rings. I fancied I smelled dry cocoa, and seemed to see light brown dust falling on the seat. Why hadn't I thought to put sugar in it when I mixed it up?

When we reached the camp, which was called Cellelager, we found we had come to one which was not in the same cla.s.s as Giessen. The sleeping-accommodations were insufficient for the crowd of men, and there was one bunk above the other. There was one canteen for the whole camp (instead of one in each hut as we had in Giessen), and here we could buy cakes, needles, thread, and b.u.t.tons, also apples.

The food was the same, except that we had soup in the morning instead of coffee, and it was the worst soup we had yet encountered. As an emetic, it was an honest, hard-working article which would bring results, but it lacked all the qualifications of a good soup. I tried it only once.

We were delighted to see no rings except what we had in our party.

The Commandant of the camp did not take any notice of them, so we were able to remove all traces of them from our new overcoats, and when Steve Le Blanc, from Ottawa, gave me a nice navy-blue civilian coat, I gave my ringed tunic to one of the boys, who forthwith pa.s.sed himself off for a ring-man, to avoid being sent out to work.

I found, however, he only enjoyed a brief exemption, for his record, all written down and sent along with him, showed his character had been blameless and exemplary, and the rings on his coat could not save him. It was "Raus in!" and "Raus out!" every day for him! In this manner did his good deeds find him out.

There was a football ground at this camp, and a theatre for the prisoners to use, but in the week we were there I saw only one game of football.

At the end of a week we were moved again, most of us. They did not, of course, tell us where we were going, but as they picked out all of us who had ever tried to escape--and all those who had refused to work--we were pretty sure it was not a "Reward of Merit" move.

We were awakened at a very early hour and were started off to the station, loaded with stuff. We had blankets, wash-basin, empty mattress, and wooden clogs. The boys did not take kindly to the wooden clogs, and under cover of the darkness--for it was long before daylight--they threw them away. The road to the station the next morning must have looked as if a royal wedding party had gone by.

This time we were glad to be able to see where we were going, although it was a dismal, barren country we travelled through, with many patches of heather moor and marsh. The settlements were scattered and the buildings poor. But even if we did not think much of the country, we liked the direction, for it was northwest, and was bringing us nearer Holland.

At Bremen, the second largest seaport in Germany, we stayed a couple of hours, but were not let out of our car, so saw nothing of the city.

At about four o'clock in the afternoon, we arrived in Oldenburg, and began our eight-mile march to Vehnemoor Camp, which is one of the Cellelager group and known as Cellelager VI. We were glad to dispose of our packs by loading them on a ca.n.a.l-boat, which we pulled along by ropes, and we arrived at the camp late in the evening.

This camp had but a few prisoners in it when we came, but there were nearly four hundred of us, and we filled it to overflowing. There were three tiers of bunks where the roof was high enough to admit of it, and that first night we were there we slept on our empty mattresses. However, we still had our Red Cross blanket and the two German blankets apiece, and we managed to keep warm. There were two rooms with two peat stoves in each room.

The camp was built beside a peat bog, on ground from which the peat had been removed, and there was no paving of any kind around it. One step from the door brought us to the raw mud, and the dirt inside the camp was indescribable. There were no books or papers; the canteen sold nothing but matches, notepaper, and something that tasted remotely like buckwheat honey.

The first morning the Commandant addressed us, through an interpreter. He told us he had heard about us. There was dead silence at that; we were pretty sure we knew what he had heard. Then he told us that some of us had refused to work and some had tried to escape; he was grieved to hear these things! He hoped they would not happen again. It was foolish to act this way, and would meet with punishment (we knew that). If we would retain his friends.h.i.+p, we must do as we were told. There was no other way to retain his friends.h.i.+p. He repeated that. Some of us felt we could get along without his friends.h.i.+p better than without some other things. We noticed from the first that he didn't seem sure of himself.