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
A SERBIAN COLONEL.
III
Funeral of a Prisoner of War
One morning at roll-call the German N.C.O. all unwittingly called, “Captain H——!” Then more insistently, “Captain H——!” And still again.
There was no reply. Captain H—— had died in hospital the night before of pneumonia, contracted through exposure when his ship was torpedoed.
I was appointed to represent our hut at the funeral. That morning, immediately after breakfast, something of a stir was to be observed about the camp, and presently the officers who had been elected to attend the funeral began to assemble in front of the Commandant’s hut.
Many of the uniforms presented considerable compromise; several of us, myself included, who had been taken in shrapnel helmets and trench equipment, having borrowed Sam Browne belts and aviators’ caps. The Serbian Colonels, however, were decidedly brave, if slightly bizarre, in their brand-new brown greatcoats, with crimson facings, lapels and linings, their horned caps and general appearance conveying to my mind a somewhat whimsical impression of armed, aggressive, and mail-sheathed beetles. The Italian Major of mountain artillery was there with a slanting feather in his cap, while the Commandant himself was resplendently martial in his spiked helmet, with, for decoration, the Iron Cross and, I think, l’Aigle Noir.
Three or four great wreaths, sombre with fir branches and bay, and bearing coloured streamers, are allocated among the various nationalities represented, and forming up more or less in processional order, the party, followed by the somewhat envious gaze of those who remain behind, moves towards the gateway. Some of our number have not been outside these gates for well-nigh a year; one officer, indeed, has preferred to forego this opportunity of liberty for an hour or two in order that he may achieve a complete year of incarceration in the Kriegsgefangenenlager, his anniversary falling due in a few days.
I myself have been captive in this camp for less than two months, yet I feel a panting and palpitating as we wait for the guard to turn the key in the gate; I seem to breathe more deeply when we have passed into the street. In a word, as he moves among us, the senior British officer has warned us that we are on parole.
Two electric tram-cars, connected, await us, and we mount and take our places. It is a cold morning, one of the coldest for some months. A small crowd which has collected gazes silently and not unsympathetically upon the scene. The group consists mostly of children, going schoolward, and perhaps it is owing to the severe cold, but their faces are pinched and thin. It moves me mightily to imagine that we are in any sense of the word at war with these little ones.
As the car speeds through the streets we rub the frost from the panes and gaze out upon the world like a batch of schoolboys on an excursion. Old Maier, the German orderly, indeed, takes particular pains to point out to us places and objects of interest as we pass; the Stadthaus; the monument to the Margrave Charles William, founder of the city, which encloses his dust; the various churches. The architecture is interesting, although, as I understand, we are moving through the least opulent parts of Carlsruhe.
On the outskirts of the town the cars stop in front of a church, where is drawn up a German guard of over a hundred, with a brass band, and a firing-party of fifty men. We file into the chapel, and the wreaths are laid upon the black coffin, which rests under the shadow of a great cross with a bronze Christ. This, and a painting of a miracle of healing, are the only adornments of an interior which is dignified and harmoniously coloured in greys and greens.
“That is the General of the district with the Commandant,” whispers Maier in my ear.
The service is brief and simple. The Lutheran pastor, in black cap and white bands, delivers a short address, reads a few passages from the Scriptures, and engages in prayer. Then the bearers take up their bitter burden and pass down the aisle. One green wreath lies on top of the coffin; it falls off, and I stoop down and replace it. As we reach the door Maier is once more at my ear. “That wreath is from the Grand Duchess of Baden!”
As we pass down the steps the band is playing somewhere in front, softly and sorrowfully, then there is a few minutes’ silence while the procession passes into the avenue leading to the cemetery. Here and there are a few desolate-looking civilians. Now comes the sound of drums; something between a distant thunder-roll and the heavy dropping of rain in a thunder shower. Chopin’s “Marche Funèbre.” I have never heard it played in a more fitting environment. The dark-grey body of German soldiery winds among the trees, which throw up gaunt, leafless branches agonizingly against a dull grey sky.
How illogical is war! I have seen a hundred men—as many as are here assembled for the burial of one—huddled into what was practically one common grave! Surely we are not come forth entirely to bury the dead with ceremony; but to persuade ourselves, to prove as convincingly as may be, that the ancient courtesies, the old kindlinesses, are not entirely dead and buried!
As the music passes into the lyric movement of the march I see wistfulness in the faces of some of the veteran warriors; regretfulness in the very stoop of their shoulders. There is something moving at all times even in the formal and ceremonial grief of man; it is accentuated when he is clothed in the full panoply of war.
A short service over the grave, then the firing-party throw their three volleys into the air, as if making noisy question as to the scheme of things at the unanswering heavens. The brasses seem to make mournful reply that no answer has indeed been vouchsafed. Then, the body being lowered into the grave, each of us casts upon it three shovelfuls of earth, making the sign of the Cross or saluting the military dead according to our creed and conception. And so we leave the poor dust, till it be disturbed by music more insistent and clamorous than the clarions of men!
THE CATHOLIC PRIEST.
A French soldier who has died in hospital is also being interred, and, though it is bitterly cold, we all wait until the cortège has arrived, and the burial service—in this case performed by the Catholic priest—has been carried out. As we return through the avenue we overtake the sad, solitary figure of a widow in sombre black leading a boy of six or seven by the hand. Both figures are suggestive of refinement, both faces are pale, and that of the mother is grief-stricken. As we pass I am so near that I almost brush them. I turn and look back at the boy, whose face is full of beauty. The insistent gaze of an enemy officer seems to frighten him, and he shrinks closer to his mother’s side.