CHAPTER VII

REMOVAL TO A STRAFE CAMP

About this time I wrote home for the first time in code. The last time I had been home on leave from France before being taken, I had made up, with the help of the rest of my family, a very rough sort of code depending on the formation of the letters. I wrote a longish message, very small, on a piece of cigarette paper, and stuck it to the flap of the envelope, and then wrote a code message in the letter saying, "Tear open flap of envelope." The letter got through all right, but they failed at home to see that it was in code. The other letters I wrote in code, and I wrote many from Fort 9 (and much more important ones), all got through successfully.

At midday on November 12th we came out of prison. We had already been told that we were going to be sent to Ingolstadt; but, though Nichol made inquiries in the camp, no one seemed to know what sort of place it was. We had to leave Clausthal camp about 2 o'clock and walk to the station, so that we had about half an hour in the camp to say "good-bye" and pass on all we had learnt. Both Kicq and I did a good deal of talking during the last hour we spent at Clausthal, and when the sentry came to fetch us we were given a very cheery send-off, nearly all the camp turning out. We had a two or three mile walk to the station, and were escorted only by an N.C.O. with a revolver. In fact, during the whole of this journey we were, quite contrary to our expectations, so badly guarded that I swore I would be properly prepared to escape the next time I had a train journey at night. The little lieutenant met us at the station, and proved to be the most incompetent traveler. Although he asked every one he saw, he never seemed to know how or where to catch any train. In fact, Kicq, who had studied the matter when we had had intentions of trying for Switzerland, knew much more about the route than he did. We had a pretty uncomfortable and very dull journey.

At Halle, after we had waited an hour or two in a Red Cross dormitory, the lieutenant made some bad muddle about the trains, and there was also a difficulty because prisoners-of-war were not allowed to travel on a "Schnellzug" (fast train). However, eventually we got into a third-class coach, and after pushing along the corridor, to the surprise of a crowd of peaceful travelers, we got into a third-class wooden-seated compartment. The lieutenant was perfectly hopeless and helpless, and I several times felt inclined to take command of the party and give the conductor a few marks to get us a decent carriage. I had a longish talk that night with him, but he would insist on smoking strong cigars with the window tight shut, and his breath stank so that I was nearly sick. He gave me rather an interesting picture of the Russian front during the big German advance. He said the dirt and discomfort were absolutely horrible. The usual Polish village consisted of huge barn-like buildings where several families lived together with a swarm of children and some half-dozen adults of both sexes. They usually slept, as far as I can make out, on top of the stoves, which were of the big tiled variety. A large number of animals and chickens lived in the same house, or rather room. For billeting purposes as many men as possible were crammed in these places—half a company or more. The whole place was indescribably filthy, and he assured me that every soldier, from a Tommy to a general, was simply covered with lice, and never got rid of them during the whole campaign. He was wounded very seriously early on in the advance. He got a bullet through his "Herzbeutel" (the bag which contains the heart), he said. The lot of the wounded was a terrible one, as they had to be transported on carts, over the worst possible roads, for very big distances to the rail-heads. Altogether he looked back on the Russian campaign with horror.

We got to Nüremberg about 2 or 3 a.m. and were put in a room above the police station or guardhouse in the station. We were allowed to buy some coffee and bread, and later got a wash and shave. We got to Ingolstadt some time about midday without further incident, and walked up to the central office of the prisoners-of-war camp. Here the lieutenant said good-bye, and I can't pretend I was sorry to see the last of him. He was quite a good, honest fellow, but one of those hopelessly conscientious people, with no initiative and no sense of humor.

After waiting in the bureau for some time we were told we were bound for Fort 9, but could elicit no information as to what sort of place it was. We were told that we should have to sleep the night at the men's camp, as the fort was about 7 kilometres out of the town, and it was either too late or inconvenient to send us out that night.

Ingolstadt is a town of some 30,000 or 40,000 inhabitants and is built on both banks of the Danube. The prisoners-of-war camp consists of half a dozen or more old forts, some of which lie on the north and some on the south bank. Fort 9 has the date 1870 above the gateway and as the others are on an almost identical plan, I expect they are much the same date. Besides these forts, which form a ring around Ingolstadt with a radius of about 7 kilometres, there is a camp for men on the outskirts of the town itself. As far as I know, all the forts except one, which is a strafe camp for N.C.O.'s who have attempted to escape, are used for officer prisoners-of-war. Fort 9, as we soon learnt, is the fort where the black sheep go. On our way to the men's camp we passed several working parties, mostly of French soldiers. As far as I could see, they showed no signs of ill-treatment, though I thought some of the Russians looked rather hungry and ill-kept. All we could see of the men's camp was a palisade with several strands of barbed wire on top. An extremely dirty, unsoldierly Bavarian sentry was sloping about outside, apparently having a beat of 200 or 300 yards long. He was merely typical of all Bavarian sentries. They are all, with rare exceptions, filthy and slovenly, and an incredibly large proportion have most unpleasant faces. Before I went to Bavaria as a prisoner, I had always looked on the South German as a kindly man—"gemütlich" is the word they like to use about themselves—but it did not take long to completely change these ideas. I had no longer any difficulty in believing that the Bavarians are justly accused of a very large share in the Belgian atrocities.

While I am on the subject I might mention here Kicq's story of how the sack of Louvain was started. The account is supported by what Major Whitton says in his book The Marne Campaign, and makes some excuses for the Germans, though it by no means frees them from blame. The Germans entered and occupied Louvain with little or no opposition, and pushed a fairly strong advance guard through the town in the direction of Antwerp. This advance guard was heavily attacked by a portion of the Belgian army, was defeated, and fled in panic and complete disorder back towards Louvain. The Germans in Louvain took these fugitives for a Belgian attack and fired on them, and they fired back. Very soon there was a general mix-up on a large scale. The defeated advance guard was being fired into by the Belgians on one side and by their own comrades on the other. The civilians in the town also thought that Louvain was being attacked and was about to be retaken by the Belgians. They were determined to do their bit, so they added to the general confusion by firing off all the guns they had left, and, if they had none, throwing furniture, hot water, and anything else handy on the heads of the Germans in the streets. A certain number of Germans were killed and injured in this way, and the German soldiers, furious not only at this but, when they found out their mistake, at having massacred their own comrades, got completely out of control and sacked and burnt the greater part of the town. Kicq, at the time when this happened, was in a hospital at Antwerp, so that his is only a second-hand account, but I think that most intelligent Belgian officers believe this to be a fairly true explanation.