Our Orderlies
Our orderlies, like ourselves, were of various nationality, but there was a consensus of opinion that the genius of the French soldier seemed to lie most in the direction of that office. I, at all events, was fortunate in my Frenchmen. First was our faithful Gustav—breaker of cups and not too scrupulous a cleaner of the same, but nevertheless a kindly and willing servant and a shrewd. When one morning, amid great excitement and much embracing and kissing upon both cheeks by his countrymen, Gustav left the camp en route for France—his indifferent health and the long period of his captivity entitling him to an exchange—we were somewhat disconsolate.
ORDERLY TOULON, CHASSEUR ALPINI.
Followed Robert, however, who told us that we might call him “Bobby,” and who broke cups quite as effectively as Gustav, and cleaned them no more efficiently. To us he was docility itself, but one morning, having dressed with extreme care, and having found a substitute to wait upon us, he went off mysteriously to town before breakfast, and on his return informed us that he had been sentenced by the Germans to fifteen months’ imprisonment “for revolt.” His offence was committed in the first year of the war, and there was dubiety as to when the punishment would commence. He showed me a photograph of his “femme et enfants,” whom he had not seen in the flesh since 2nd August, 1914. Then he wept. “Courage, Robert,” said I. “You will see your enfants, après la guerre.” “Yes, but they will no longer be enfants!”
THE TWO SERBIAN COLONELS TAKE THE SUN.
LT. BERTOLOTTI.
VII
Carlsruhe at its Kindliest
With the coming of spring and early summer, Carlsruhe Camp, which for many weeks had lain under deep snow, followed, at the touch of thaw, by layers of mud and great pools of water, began to assume a more pleasing aspect. In the centre of the court was a plot of green with a bordering of rose bushes. On either side of this were two brief avenues of horse-chestnut trees, which towards the middle of April were in full foliage, the leaves hanging downwards like hands held demurely or devoutly, the flowers showing like candles before an altar, or fairy lights upon a fir tree at Christmas time.
A month later, sitting in the court reading, we would be bombarded by blossoms from these chestnuts, as if they would say, Look! And assuredly they were well worth looking at. Whimsically they reminded me of rubicund country faces framed in old-fashioned white bonnets.
A prisoner myself, I imprison a few of these blossoms where they have fallen between the pages of my book. In the fall of a blossom or of a leaf from a tree there is the suggestion of a launch as well as of a funeral.
Outside the Lager was a great poplar with a fine upward thrust and sweep above the palisade; within was his tremulous sister, an aspen, with leaves all aquiver like sequins upon the attire of a gipsy dancer.
Even the barbed-wire fences seemed to make effort to hide something of their menace, the grasses and weeds growing at their feet, laying frail hands upon them as if clinging to them for support.
LIEUT. CARUSO
A new hut is being erected in camp, and in the early morning, among the other perfumes of Nature, I noted with pleasure the smell of new wood. After all, a wooden hut is but a tree forced and fashioned into another growth. Pity it is, almost, that it in turn cannot bourgeon and bring forth!
I am reading Turgenev. Lieut. Hunt passes me running; he is doing his daily three times circuit of the camp. “Torrents of Spring!” he cries laughingly, kicking up his heels colt-like, in reference both to my book and to his own exuberance!