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 class 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 buttons, 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 passed 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 canal-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 friendship, we must do as we were told. There was no other way to retain his friendship. He repeated that. Some of us felt we could get along without his friendship better than without some other things. We noticed from the first that he didn't seem sure of himself.
Then came roll-call!
None of us like the thought of getting out to work in this horrible climate, cold, dark, and rainy, and the roll-call brought out the fact that we had very few able-bodied men. He had a list of our names, and we were called in groups into an office. Bromley and I gave our occupations as "farmers," for we hoped to be sent out to work on a farm and thus have an opportunity of getting away.
Most of the Canadians were "trappers," though I imagine many of them must have gained their experience from mouse-traps. Many of the Englishmen were "boxers" and "acrobats." There were "musicians," "cornetists," and "trombone artists," "piano-tuners," "orchestra leaders," "ventriloquists," "keepers in asylums," "corsetiers," "private secretaries," "masseurs," "agents," "clerks," "judges of the Supreme Court," and a fine big fellow, a Canadian who looked as if he might have been able to dig a little, gave his occupation as a "lion-tamer."
The work which we were wanted to do was to turn over the sod on the peat bogs. It looked as if they were just trying to keep us busy, and every possible means was tried by us to avoid work.
The "lion-tamer" and three of his companions, fine, vigorous young chaps, stayed in bed for about a week, claiming to be sick. They got up for a while every afternoon—to rest. The doctor came three times a week to look us over, but in the intervening days another man, not a doctor, who was very good-natured, attended to us.
One day nine went on "sick parade"; that is, lined up before the medical examiner and were all exempted from work. The next day there were ninety of us numbered among the sick, and we had everything from galloping consumption to ingrowing toe-nails, and were prepared to give full particulars regarding the same. But they were not asked for, for armed guards came in suddenly and we were marched out to work at the point of the bayonet.
Steve Le Blanc, one of the party, who was a splendid actor, spent the morning painfully digging his own grave. He did it so well, and with such faltering movements and so many evidences of early decay, that he almost deceived our own fellows. He looked so drawn and pale that I was not sure but what he was really sick, until it was all over. When he had the grave dug down to the distance of a couple of feet, the guard stopped him and made him fill it in again, which he did, and erected a wooden cross to his own memory, and delivered a touching funeral oration eulogizing the departed.
We all got in early that day, but most of us decided we would not try the "sick parade" again.
This was in the month of January, which is the rainy season, and there was every excuse for the boys' not wanting to work—besides the big reason for not wanting to help the Germans.
One night, when some of our fellows came in from work, cold, wet, and tired, and were about to attack their supper of black bread and soup, the mail came in, and one of the boys from Toronto got a letter from a young lady there who had been out on the Kingston Road to see an Internment Camp. He let me read the letter. She had gone out one beautiful July day, she said, and found the men having their evening meal under the beeches, and they did so enjoy their strawberries and ice-cream; and they had such lovely gardens, she said, and enough vegetables in them to provide for the winter. The conclusion of the letter is where the real sting came: "I am so glad, dear Bert, that you are safe in Germany out of the smoke and roar and dirt of the trenches. It has made me feel so satisfied about you, to see these prisoners. I was worrying a little about you before I saw them. But now I won't worry a bit. I am glad to see prisoners can be so happy. I will just hope you are as well cared for as they are.... Daddy and Mother were simply wild about Germany when they were there two years before the war. They say the German ways are so quaint and the children have such pretty manners, and I am afraid you will be awfully hard to please when you come back, for Daddy and Mother were crazy about German cooking."
I handed the letter back, and Bert and I looked at each other. He rolled his eyes around the crowded room, where five hundred men were herded together. Two smoking stoves, burning their miserable peat, made all the heat there was. The double row of berths lined the walls. Outside, the rain and sleet fell dismally. Bert had a bowl of prison soup before him, and a hunk of bread, black and heavy. He was hungry, wet, tired, and dirty, but all he said was, "Lord! What do they understand?"
Every day we devised new ways of avoiding going to work. "Nix arbide" (no work) was our motto. The Russians, however, never joined us in any of our plans, neither did they take any part in the fun. They were poor, melancholy fellows, docile and broken in spirit, and the guards were much harsher with them than with us, which was very unjust, and we resented it.
We noticed, too, that among our own fellows those who would work were made to work, while the "lion-tamer" and his husky followers lay in bed unmolested. His latest excuse was that the doctor told him to lie in bed a month—for he had a floating kidney. Of course the doctor had not said anything of the kind, but he bluffed it out.
One morning when the guards were at their difficult task of making up a working party, they reported that they were twenty-five men short. Every one had been at roll-call the night before, the guards were on duty, no one could have got away. Wild excitement reigned. Nobody knew what had happened to them. After diligent searching they were found—rolled up in their mattresses.
They were all quickly hauled forth and sent out to work. The mattress trick had worked well until too many had done it, on this morning.
The morning was a troublesome time, and we all felt better when it had passed; that is, if we had eluded or bluffed the guard. Bromley and I had a pretty successful way of getting very busy when the digging party was being made up. We would scrub the table or grab a gadbroom and begin to sweep, and then the guards, thinking this work had been given to us, would leave us alone!
As time went on, the Commandant became more and more worried. I think he realized that he had a tough bunch to handle. If he had understood English, he could have heard lots of interesting things about his Kaiser and his country—particularly in the songs. The "lion-tamer" and his three followers generally led the singing, sitting up in their bunks and roaring out the words.
The singing usually broke out just after the guards had made an unsuccessful attempt to pull the bedclothes off some of the boys who had determined to stay in bed all day; and when the few docile ones had departed for the peat bog, the "shut-ins" grew joyful to the point of singing.
This was a hot favorite:
"O Germany, O Germany;
Your fate is sealed upon the sea.
Come out, you swine, and face our fleet;
We'll smash you into sausage-meat."
Another one had a distinctly Canadian flavor:
"Kaiser Bill, Kaiser Bill, you'd better be in hell, be in hell!
When Borden's beauties start to yell, start to yell,
We'll hang you high on Potsdam's palace wall—
You're a damned poor Kaiser after all."
They had another song telling how they hated to work for the Germans, the refrain of which was "Nix arbide" (I won't work).
The Commandant came in one day to inspect the huts. The "bed-ridden" ones were present in large numbers, sitting up enjoying life very well for "invalids." The Commandant was in a terrible humor, and cried out "Schweinstall"—which is to say "pig-pen"—at the sight of the mattresses. He didn't like anything, and raged at the way the fellows had left their beds. It might have seemed more reasonable, if he had raged at the way some of them had not left their beds! The men he was calling down were the gentle ones, those who were out working. But to the "lion-tamer" and his followers, who were lazily lying in their beds, laughing at him, he said never a word.
We knew enough about Germany and German methods to know this sort of a camp could not last. Something was going to happen; either we should all be moved, or there would be a new Commandant and a new set of guards sent down. This Commandant had only handled Russians, I think, and we were a new sort of Kriegsgefangenen (prisoners of war). Bromley and I wanted to make our get-away before there was a change, but we had no compass—my card had not been answered.
There was a man named Edwards, who was captured May 8th, a Princess Pat, who once at Giessen showed me his compass and suggested that we go together next time. He was at Vehnemoor, too, and Bromley and I, in talking it over, decided to ask Edwards and his friend to join us. Then the four of us got together and held many conferences. Edwards had a watch and a compass; I had maps, and Edwards bought another one. We talked over many plans, and to Edwards belongs the honor of suggesting the plan which we did try.
The difficulties in the way of escaping were many. The camp-ground was about three hundred feet long and seventy-five feet wide, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence about ten feet high. The fence had been built by putting strong, high posts in the ground and stretching the wire on with a wire-stretcher, so that it could not be sprung either up or down. The bottom wires were very close together. Inside of this was an ordinary barbed-wire fence with four or five strands, through which we were forbidden to go.
Outside the camp at the northwest corner was the hut where the guards lived when not on duty, and beside this hut was the kennel where the watch-dog was kept. He was a big dog, with a head like a husky! The camp was lighted by great arc-lights about sixty feet apart. German soldiers were stationed outside and all around the camp, and were always on the alert.
We planned to go on Friday night, but an unforeseen event made that impossible. A very dull German soldier had taken out about a dozen Frenchmen to work on the moor. Two of them had slipped away some time during the afternoon, and he did not notice he was short until he got in. Then great excitement prevailed, and German soldiers were sent out in pursuit. We watched them going out, dozens of them, and decided this was a poor time to go abroad. The moon was nearly full and the clouds which had filled the sky all day, were beginning to break, all of which was against us.
On Saturday, just as we feared, an extra guard of about twenty-five men was sent in from Oldenburg, and as the guard changed every two hours, and this was about 5.30 o'clock in the evening when they came, we reasoned that the double guard would go on at seven. After the guard had been doubled, there would be but little chance for us.
It was now or never!