PARNEWINKEL CAMP
The key turned at last!
Entering, the guard, with face as impassive as ever, motioned to me to sweep out. I wondered if I could have mistaken the number of days, or if... we were going to get longer than the two weeks.
He did not enlighten me! I was taken out to wash, and filled my brown pitcher at the tap—just as usual. Then came the moment of tense anxiety.... Would he lock me in?
He gave me the usual allowance of bread, which I put in my pocket, as a man who was going on a journey and wants to be on his way, without waiting to eat.
Then he motioned to me to come out, and I knew we were free! Ted was at the door of his cell, and we followed the guard downstairs without speaking.
In the room below our things were given back to us. I dared not examine my cap to see if my maps had been touched, but I could not keep from turning it around as if to be sure it was mine. Certainly it looked all right. Our two little parcels, still unopened, were returned to us, and the guard from Vehnemoor who had come for us had brought one of the prisoners with him to carry our stuff that had been left there, blankets, wash-basin, clogs, etc.
Map which Private Simmons got from the Canadian Artist at Giessen, and which was sewed inside the Pasteboard of his Cap. His successful journey from Selsingen to Holland is indicated by the dotted line ............ The unsuccessful attempt is shown ---------- from Oldenburg.
From the prisoner we got the news of the camp.
"How are the folks at home?" we asked him.
"Ninety of the worst ones—since you two fellows and Bromley left—were taken to another camp, and when they were moving them McKinnon and another fellow beat it—but we're afraid they were caught."
"Why?" we asked him.
"They catch them all; nobody gets out of Germany alive."
"You talk like a guard!" Ted said.
"Well," said the boy (I am sorry I forget his name), "look here. Who do you know that has got away? You didn't; Bromley didn't; the two Frenchmen who went the night before you went didn't. Do you hear of any who did?"
"Keep your ear to the ground and you will!" said Ted.
"They'll shoot you the next time," he said earnestly. "If I were you, I wouldn't try it."
Then the guard came, and we could say no more.
Again we were taken to the station and put on the train. Our hands were not tied this time; we were just ordinary prisoners now—we had done ours. Besides, I suppose they knew we shouldn't run far—that had been taken out of us by the "cells."
But our good spirits came back when the train started. We went east towards Rotenburg, through the same sort of low, marshy country we had travelled before, with scrubby trees and plenty of heather moor.
We passed through Bremen again, where we got a glimpse of white sails, and then on to Rotenburg, where we changed cars and had to wait for two hours.
Of course we were hungry—the Oldenburg prison had not sent us out well fed to meet the world, and the one slice of bread had gone. But we had prison-stamps, and our guard took us to the lunch-counter at Rotenburg, where we got a cup of real coffee, some bread, and an orange. The guard paid for what we got with his own money, accepting our stamps in payment. Our stamps were good only at Vehnemoor Camp, having the name "Vehnemoor" stamped on them.
I suppose we were two tough-looking characters. The people seemed to think so, for they looked at us with startled faces, and a little girl who was crossing the platform ran back in alarm to her mother when she saw us coming.
We arrived at Dienstedt after nightfall, and walked out a mile along a rough road to the camp, which was one of the Cellelager group—Cellelager I.
We saw that it consisted of two huts, and when we entered the hut to which we were taken, we saw nothing but Russians, pale-faced, dark-eyed, bearded Russians. They were sitting around, hardly speaking to each other, some mending their clothes, some reading, some staring idly ahead of them. We were beginning to be afraid they had sent us to a camp where there was no one but Russians, until we saw some British, at the other end.
"By Jove, I'll bet you're hungry," a big fellow said, reaching up into his bunk and bringing out a pasteboard parcel. "Here you are, matey; there's a bit of cheese and biscuits. I've a bit of water heatin', too; we'll get you something to drink. Get something into you; we ain't bad done for 'ere with our parcels comin' reglar."
The other men brought out boxes, too,—currant-loaf, sardines, fruit-cake, and chocolate. There were three coal-stoves in the room, and on one of these a pan of water was steaming. They had condensed milk and cocoa, and made us up mugs of it, and I never, anywhere, tasted anything so good.
There were two tiers of bunks in the room, but around the wall there was an open space where there were some little tables. Two of the Englishmen, who were playing cards, put them away and offered us their table.
"Here, boys, be comfortable; sit right down here and let us see you eat."
We let them see us! We ate like wolf-hounds. We ate, not until we were satisfied, but until we were ashamed! And still the invitations to eat were heard on every side. We were welcome to the last crumb they had!
When at last we stopped, they began to tell us about the camp. It seemed that the distinguishing feature was lice! It had never been fumigated, and the condition was indescribable. "We're bad enough," one of the Englishmen said, "but the Russians are in holes."
Then they told us what they had done to attract the attention of the authorities. The branch camps are never inspected or visited, as are the main camps such as Cellelager itself and Giessen, and so conditions in the out-of-the-way camps have been allowed to sink far below the level of these.
"We each wrote a card to some one in England, telling them about the lice. We would have stretched it—if we could—but we couldn't. We drew pictures, and told what these lice could do; especially we told about the Russians, and how bad they were. There are twenty-one of us, and there went out twenty-one cards all dealing with the same subject. The censor began to feel crawly, I'll bet, before he got far into reading them, and he would not let one of those cards out of Germany. It wouldn't have sounded very good to the neutral countries. So along came one of the head officers. He came in swaggering, but, by George, he went out scratching! And he certainly got something moving. We're all going down to Cellelager to-morrow to be fumigated; and while we're out, there's going to be a real old-fashioned house-cleaning! You're just in time, boys. Have you got any?"
"We did not have any," we said, "when we came."
"Well, you'll get them here, just sitting around. They're all over the floor and crawl up the leg of your chair; they crawl up the wall and across the ceiling and drop down on your head and down the back of your collar; they're in the walls and in the beds now. But their days are numbered, for we are all going up to Cellelager to-morrow to be fumigated. They're running a special train, and taking us all."
That night Ted and I slept on two benches in the middle of the room, but we found that what the boys said was true. They had crawled up on us, or else had fallen from the ceiling, or both. We had them!
But the next day we made the trip to Cellelager by special train—"The Louse Train" it was called.
The fumigator was the same as at Giessen, and it did its work well. While the clothes were baking, we stood in a well-heated room to wait for them. The British and French, having received parcels, were in good condition, but the Russians, who had to depend entirely on the prison-fare, were a pitiful sight. They looked, when undressed, like the India famine victims, with their washboard ribs and protruding stomachs, dull eyes and parched skin. The sores caused by the lice were deep and raw, and that these conditions, together with the bad water and bad food, had had fatal results, could be seen in the Russian cemetery at Cellelager I, where the white Russian crosses stand, row on row. The treatment of Russian prisoners will be a hard thing for Germany to explain to the nations when the war is over.
Parnewinkel was the name of the village near Cellelager I, and this name was printed on the prison-stamps which we used. The camp was built on a better place than the last one, and it was well drained, but the water was bad and unfit to drink unless boiled.
As the spring came on, many of the Russians went out to work with the farmers, and working parties, mostly made up of Russians, were sent out each day. Their work was to dig ditches through the marshes, to reclaim the land. To these working parties soup was sent out in the middle of the day, and I, wishing to gain a knowledge of the country, volunteered for "Suppentragen."
A large pot, constructed to hold the heat by having a smaller one inside which held the soup, was carried by two of us, with a stick through the handle, to the place where the Russians were working, and while they were attending to the soup, we looked around and learned what we could of the country. I saw a method of smoking meat which was new to me, at a farmhouse near where the Russians were making a road. Edwards and I, with some others, had carried out the soup. The Russians usually ate their soup in the cow-stable part of the house, but the British and Canadians went right into the kitchen. In this house everything was under one roof—that is, cows, chickens, kitchen, and living-room—and from the roof of the kitchen the hams were hung. The kitchen stove had two or three lengths of pipe, just enough to start the smoke in the right direction, but not enough to lead it out of the house. Up among the beams it wound and curled and twisted, wrapping the hams round and round, and then found its way out in the best way it could. Of course some of it wandered down to the kitchen where the women worked, and I suppose it bothered them, but women are the suffering sex in Germany; a little smoke in their eyes is not here or there.
The houses we saw had thatched roofs, with plastered walls, and I think in every case the cow-stable was attached. Dairying was the chief industry; that and the raising of pigs, for the land is poor and marshy. Still, if the war lasts long enough, the bad lands of Germany will be largely reclaimed by the labor of Russian prisoners. It's cheap and plentiful. There were ninety thousand of them bagged in one battle in the early days of the war, at the Mazurian Lakes! The Russians are for the most part simple, honest fellows, very sad and plaintive, and deserving of better treatment than they have had.
When the Russians had gone out to work, leaving only the sick ones, and the English and French, sometimes there were not enough well prisoners for "Suppentragen," for the British were clever in the matter of feigning sickness. The Revier was in charge of a doctor and a medical Sergeant, who gave exemption from work very easily. Then there were ways of getting sick which were confusing to doctors.
Some one found out how to raise a swelling, and there was quite an epidemic of swollen wrists and ankles. A little lump of earth in a handkerchief, pounded gently on the place, for twenty minutes or so, will bring the desired result. Soap-pills will raise the temperature. Tobacco, eaten, will derange the heart. These are well-known methods of achieving sick-leave.
I had a way all my own. I had a loose toe-nail, quite ready to come off, but I noticed it in time, and took great care not to let it come off. Then I went to the doctor to have it removed. On that I got exemption till the nail grew.
One day at Parnewinkel, Edwards and I were called into the Commandant's office, whither we went with many misgivings—we did not know how much he knew of us and our plans.
But the honest man only wanted to pay us. Edwards had worked quite a bit at Vehnemoor, but I couldn't remember that I had worked at all. However, he insisted that I had one and a half days to my credit, and paid me twenty-seven pfennigs, or six and three quarter cents! I remembered then that I had volunteered for work on the bog, for the purpose of seeing what the country was like around the camp. I signed a receipt for the amount he gave me, and the transaction was entered in a book, and the receipt went back to the head camp.
"Look at that," said Ted; "they starve us, but if we work they will pay us, even taking considerable pains to thrust our wages upon us. Of a truth they are a 'spotty' people."
However, the reason for paying us for our work was not so much their desire to give the laborer his hire as that the receipts might be shown to visitors, and appear in their records.
The Russians had a crucifix at the end of the hut which they occupied, and a picture of the Virgin and the Holy Child before which they bowed and crossed themselves in their evening devotions. Not all of them took part. There were some unbelieving brothers who sat morosely back, and took no notice, wrapped in their own sad thoughts. I wondered what they thought of it all! The others humbly knelt and prayed and cried out their sorrows before the crucifix. Their hymns were weird and plaintive, yet full of a heroic hope that God had not forgotten.
One of them told me that God bottles up the tears of his saints, hears their cry, and in His own good time will deliver all who trust in Him. That deliverance has already come to many of them the white-crossed graves, beyond the marsh, can prove. But surely, somewhere an account is being kept of their sorrows and their wrongs, and some day will come the reckoning! Germany deserves the contempt of all nations, if it were for nothing else than her treatment of the Russian prisoners.
When my toe-nail began to grow on, I got permanent exemption from work because of my shoulder, and was given the light task of keeping clear the ditches that ran close beside the huts.
I often volunteered on parcel parties, for I liked the mile and a half walk down the road through the village of Parnewinkel to Selsingen, where there was a railway station and post-office. Once in a while I saw German women sending parcels to soldiers at the front.
The road lay through low-lying land, with scrubby trees. There was little to see, but it was a pleasure to get out of the camp with its depressing atmosphere. In Parnewinkel there was an implement dealer who sold "Deering" machinery, mowers and rakes, and yet I never saw either a mower or a rake working. I saw women cutting hay with scythes, and remember well, on one trip to the post-office, I saw an old woman, bare-legged, with wooden clogs, who should have been sitting in a rocking-chair, swinging her scythe through some hay, and she was doing it well, too. The scarcity of horses probably accounted for the mowers and rakes not being used, cows being somewhat too slow in their gait to give good results. Although Hanover is noted for its horses, the needs of the army seem to have depleted the country, and I saw very few. Every one rides a bicycle. I think I saw less than a dozen automobiles.
Having been exempted from work, I was around the camp all day, and one day found a four-legged affair with a ring on the top big enough to hold a wash-basin. In this I saw a possibility of making a stove. Below, I put a piece of tin—part of a parcel-box—to hold the fire, with a couple of bricks under it to save the floor, and then, using the wooden parcel-boxes for fuel, I was ready to look about for ingredients to make "mulligan."
There is nothing narrow or binding about the word "mulligan"; mulligan can be made of anything. It all depended on what we had! On this stove I made some very acceptable mulligan out of young turnip-tops (they had been brought to the camp when very small seedlings, from a farmer's field where one of our boys had been working, and transplanted in the prison-yard,—I only used the outside leaves, and let them go on growing), potatoes (stolen from the guards' garden), oxo cubes (sent in a parcel), oyster biscuits (also sent in a parcel), salt and pepper, and water. The turnip-tops I put in the bottom of the dish, then laid on the potatoes, covering with water and adding salt. I then covered this with another wash-basin, and started my fire. We were not allowed to have fires, and this gave the mulligan all the charm of the forbidden.
When it was cooked, I added the oxo cubes and the oyster biscuit, and mashed all together with part of the lid of a box, and the mulligan was ready. The boys were not critical, and I believe I could get from any one of them a recommendation for a cook's position. In the winter we had had no trouble about a fire, for the stoves were going, and we made our mulligan and boiled water for tea on them.
Our guards were ordinary soldiers—sometimes those who had been wounded or were sick and were now convalescent—and we had all sorts. Usually the N.C.O.'s were the more severe. The privates did not bother much about us: they had troubles enough of their own.
At the school garden, where the Commandant lived, I went to work one day, and made the acquaintance of his little son, a blue-eyed cherub of four or five years, who addressed me as "Englisches Schwein," which was, I suppose, the way he had heard his father speak of us. He did it quite without malice, though, and no doubt thought that was our proper name. He must have thought the "Schwein" family rather a large one!
It was about May, I think, that a letter came from my brother Flint, telling me he was sending me some of the "cream cheese I was so fond of"—and I knew my compass was on the way.
In about three weeks the parcel came, and I was careful to open the cheese when alone. The lead foil had every appearance of being undisturbed, but in the middle of it I found the compass!
After that we talked over our plans for escape. Edwards and I were the only Canadians in the camp, and we were determined to make a break as soon as the nights got longer. In the early summer, when the daylight lasts so long, we knew we should have no chance, for there were only four or five hours of darkness, but in August we hoped to "start for home."