Three Times and Out Part 2

When, at last, I sat down on one of the benches, the whole place seemed to float by me. Nothing would stand still. The sensation was like the water dizziness which makes one feel he is being rapidly propelled upstream. But after sitting awhile, it pa.s.sed, and I began to recognize some of our fellows. Frost, of my own battalion, was there, and when I told him I had had nothing to eat since the early morning of the day before, he immediately produced a hardtack biscuit and sc.r.a.ped out the bottom of his jam tin. They had been served with a ration of war-bread, and several of the boys offered me a share of their scanty allowance, but the first mouthful was all I could take.

It was sour, heavy, and stale.

The school pump had escaped the fate of the last pump I had seen, and was in good working order, and its asthmatic creaking as it brought up the stream of water was music in my ears. We went out in turns and drank like thirsty cattle. I drank until my jaws were stiff as if with mumps, and my ears ached, and in a few minutes my legs were tied in cramps.

While I was vainly trying to rub them out with my one good hand, Fred McKelvey came up and told me a sure cure for leg-cramp. It is to turn the toes up as far as possible, and straighten out the legs, and it worked a cure for me. He said he had taken the cramps out of his legs this way when he was in the water.

I remember some of the British Columbia boys who were there.

Sergeants Potentier, George Fitz, and Mudge, of Grand Forks; Reid, Diplock, and Johnson, of Vancouver; Munroe and Wildblood, of Rossland; Keith, Palmer, Larkins, Scott, and Croak. Captain Scudamore, my Company Captain, came over to where I sat, and kindly inquired about my wounds. He wrote down my father's address, too, and said he would try to get a letter to him.

There was a house next door--quite a fine house with a neat paling and long, shuttered windows, at which the vines were beginning to grow. It looked to be in good condition, except that part of the verandah had been torn away. The shutters were closed on its long, graceful windows, giving it the appearance of a tall, stately woman in heavy mourning.

When we were at the pump, we heard a gentle tapping, and, looking up, we saw a very handsome dark-eyed Belgian woman at one of the windows.

Instinctively we saluted, and quick as a flash she held a Union Jack against the pane!

A cheer broke from us involuntarily, and the guards sprang to attention, suspecting trouble. But the flag was gone as quickly as it came, and when we looked again, the shutters were closed and the deep, waiting silence had settled down once more on the stately house of shutters.

But to us it had become suddenly possessed of a living soul! The flash of those sad black eyes, as well as the glimpse of the flag, seemed to call to us to carry on! They typified to us exactly what we were fighting for!

After the little incident of the flag, it was wonderful how bright and happy we felt. Of course, I know, the ministrations of the pump helped, for we not only drank all we wanted, but most of the boys had a wash, too; but we just needed to be reminded once in awhile of what the real issues of the war were.

Later in the day, after we had been examined by another medical man, who dressed our wounds very skillfully, and gently, too, we came back to the school, and found there two heavily veiled Belgian women. They had bars of chocolate for us, for which we were very grateful. They were both in deep mourning, and seemed to have been women of high social position, but their faces were very pale and sad, and when they spoke their voices were reedy and broken, and their eyes were black pools of misery. Some of the boys afterwards told me that their daughters had been carried off by the Germans, and their husbands shot before their eyes.

I noticed the absence of children and young girls on the streets.

There were only old men and women, it seemed, and the faces of these were sad beyond expression. There were no outbursts of grief; they seemed like people whose eyes were cried dry, but whose spirits were still unbroken.

Later in the day we were taken to the station, to take the train for the prison-camp at Giessen. Of course, they did not tell us where we were going. They did not squander information on us or satisfy our curiosity, if they could help it.

The station was full of people when we got there, and there seemed to be a great deal of eating done at the stations. This was more noticeable still in German stations, as I saw afterwards.

Our mode of travelling was by the regular prisoner train which had lately--quite lately--been occupied by horses. It had two small, dirty windows, and the floor was bare of everything but dirt. We were dumped into it--not like sardines, for they fit comfortably together, but more like cordwood that is thrown together without being piled.

If we had not had arms or legs or heads, there would have been just room for our bodies, but as it was, everybody was in everybody's way, and as many of us were wounded, and all of us were tired and hungry, we were not very amiable with each other.

I tried to stand up, but the jolting of the car made me dizzy, and so I doubled up on the floor, and I don't know how many people sat on me. I remember one of the boys I knew, who was beside me on the floor, Fairy Strachan. He had a bad wound in his chest, given him by a dog of a German guard, who prodded him with a bayonet after he was captured, for no reason at all. Fortunately the bayonet struck a rib, and so the wound was not deep, but not having been dressed, it was very painful.

I could not sleep at all that night, for the air was stifling, and somebody's arm or foot or head was always b.u.mping into me. I wonder if Robinson Crusoe ever remembered to be thankful for fresh air and room to stretch himself! We asked the guards for water, for we soon grew very thirsty, and when we stopped at a station, one of the boys, looking out, saw the guard coming with a pail of water, and cried out, "Here's water--boys!" The thought of a drink put new life in us, and we scrambled to our feet. It was water, all right, and plenty of it, but it was boiling hot and we could not drink it; and we could not tell from the look of opaque stupidity on the face of the guard whether he did it intentionally or not. He may have been a boiling-water-before-meals advocate. He looked balmy enough for anything!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Officers' Quarters in a German Military Prison]

At some of the stations the civilians standing on the platform filled our water-bottles for us, but it wasn't enough. We had only two water-bottles in the whole car. However, at Cologne, a boy came quickly to the car window at our call, and filled our water-bottles from a tap, over and over again. He would run as fast as he could from the tap to the window, and left a bottle filling at the tap while he made the trip. In this way every man in the car got enough to drink, and this blue-eyed, shock-headed lad will ever live in grateful memory.

The following night after midnight we reached Giessen, and were unloaded and marched through dark streets to the prison-camp, which is on the outskirts of the city. We were put into a dimly lighted hut, stale and foul-smelling, too, and when we put up the windows, some of our own Sergeants objected on account of the cold, and shut them down. Well, at least we had room if we hadn't air, and we huddled together and slept, trying to forget what we used to believe about the need of fresh air.

As soon as the morning came, I went outside and watched a dull red, angry sky flus.h.i.+ng toward sunrise. Red in the morning sky denotes wind, it is said, but we didn't need signs that morning to proclaim a windy day, for the wind already swept the courtyard, and whipped the green branches of the handsome trees which marked the driveway. My spirits rose at once when I filled my lungs with air and looked up at the scudding clouds which were being dogged across the sky by the wind.

A few straggling prisoners came out to wash at the tap in the courtyard, and I went over to join them, for I was grimy, too, with the long and horrible ride. With one hand I could make but little progress, and was spreading the dirt rather than removing it, until a friendly Belgian, seeing my difficulty, took his cake of soap and his towel, and washed me well.

We were then given a ration of bread about two inches thick, and a drink of something that tasted like water boiled in a coffee-pot, and after this we were divided into ten groups. Those of us who knew each other tried hard to stay together, but we soon learned to be careful not to appear to be too anxious, for the guards evidently had instructions to break up previous acquaintances.h.i.+ps.

The wounded were marched across the compound to the "Revier," a dull, gray, solid-looking building, where again we were examined and graded. Those seriously wounded were sent to the lazaret, or hospital proper. I, being one of the more serious cases, was marched farther on to the lazaret, and we were all taken to a sort of waiting-room, and taken off in groups to the general bathroom to have a bath, before getting into the hospital clothes.

With me was a young bugler of the Fifth Royal Highlanders, Montreal, a little chap not more than fifteen, whose pink cheeks and curly hair would have made an appeal to any human being: he looked so small and lonesome and far from home. A smart young military doctor jostled against the boy's shattered arm, eliciting from him a cry of pain, whereupon he began to make fun of the little bugler, by marching around him, making faces. It gave me a queer feeling to see a grown-up man indulging in the tactics of a spoiled child, but I have heard many people express the opinion, in which I now heartily agree, that the Germans are a childish sort of people. They are stupidly boastful, inordinately fond of adulation and attention, and peevish and sulky when they cannot have their own way. I tried to imagine how a young German boy would have been treated by one of our doctors, and laughed to myself at the absurdity of the thought that they would make faces at him!

The young bugler was examined before I was, and as he was marched out of the room, the doctor who had made the faces grabbed at his kilt with an insulting gesture, at which the lad attempted to kick him.

The doctor dodged the kick, and the Germans who were in the room roared with laughter. I hated them more that minute than I had up to that time.

The Belgian attendants who looked after the bathing of us were kind and polite. One of them could speak a little English, and he tried hard to get information regarding his country from us.

"Is it well?" he asked us eagerly. "My country--is it well?"

We thought of the sh.e.l.l-scarred country, with its piles of smouldering ashes, its pallid women with their haunted faces, the deathlike silence of the ruined streets. We thought of these things, but we didn't tell him of them. We told him the war was going on in great shape: the Allies were advancing all along the line, and were going to be in Berlin by Christmas. It was worth the effort to see his little pinched face brighten. He fairly danced at his work after that, and when I saw him afterwards, he eagerly asked--"My country--is it well?" I do not know why he thought I knew, or maybe he didn't think so. But, anyway, I did my best. I gave him a glowing account of the Allied successes, and painted a gloomy future for the Kaiser, and I again had my reward, in his glowing face.

Everything we had was taken from us except shoes, socks, cap, and handkerchief, and we did not see them again: neither did we get another bath, although I was six weeks in the hospital.

The hospital clothes consisted of a pajama suit of much-faded flannelette, but I was glad to get into it, and doubly glad to get rid of my s.h.i.+rt and tunic, which were stiff on one side with dried blood. From the lazaret, where I had my bath, I could see the gun platform with its machine guns, commanding every part of the Giessen Prison. The guard pointed it out to me, to quiet my nerves, I suppose, and to scare me out of any thought of insubordination.

However, he need not have worried--I was not thinking of escaping just then or starting an insurrection either. I was quite content to lie down on the hard straw bed and pull the quilt over me and take a good long rest.

CHAPTER IV

THE LAZARET

The lazaret in which I was put was called "M.G.K.," which is to say Machine Gun Company, and it was exactly like the other hospital huts.

There were some empty beds, and the doctor seemed to have plenty of time to attend to us. For a few days, before my appet.i.te began to make itself felt, I enjoyed the rest and quiet, and slept most of the time. But at the end of a week I began to get restless.

The Frenchman whose bed was next to mine fascinated me with his piercing black eyes, unnaturally bright and glittering. I knew the look in his eyes; I had seen it--after the battle--when the wounded were coming in, and looked at us as they were carried by on stretchers. Some had this look--some hadn't. Those who had it never came back.

And sometimes before the fighting, when the boys were writing home, the farewell letter that would not be mailed unless--"something happened"--I've seen that look in their faces, and I knew... just as they did... the letter would be mailed!

Emile, the Frenchman, had the look!

He was young, and had been strong and handsome, although his face was now thin and pinched and bloodless, like a slum child's; but he hung on to life pitifully. He hated to die--I knew that by the way he fought for breath, and raged when he knew for sure that it was going from him.

In the middle of his raging, he would lean over his bed and peer into my face, crying "L'Anglaise--l'Anglaise," with his black eyes snapping like dagger points. I often had to turn away and put my pillow over my eyes.

But one afternoon, in the middle of it, the great silence fell on him, and Emile's struggles were over.

Our days were all the same. n.o.body came to see us; we had no books.

There was a newspaper which was brought to us every two weeks, printed in English, but published in German, with all the German fine disregard for the truth. It said it was "printed for Americans in Europe." The name of it was "The Continental Times," but I never heard it called anything but "The Continental Liar." Still, it was print, and we read it; I remember some of the sentences. It spoke of an uneasy feeling in England "which the presence of turbaned Hindoos and Canadian cowboys has failed to dispel." Another one said, "The Turks are operating the Suez Ca.n.a.l in the interests of neutral s.h.i.+pping." "Fleet-footed Canadians" was an expression frequently used, and the insinuation was that the Canadians often owed their liberty to their speed.

But we managed to make good use of this paper. I got one of the attendants, Ivan, a good-natured, flat-footed Russian, to bring me a pair of scissors, and the boy in the cot next to mine had a stub of pencil, and between us we made a deck of cards out of the white s.p.a.ces of the paper, and then we played solitaire, time about, on our quilts.

I got my first parcel about the end of May, from a Mrs. Andrews whose son I knew in Trail and who had entertained me while I was in London.