"I won't go till you learn to speak politely to me."

The Commandant then rushed at the telephone and pretended to wind the handle violently, but without really calling up at all. He put the instrument to his ear and said:

"Herr General Peters. Are you there? I am Hauptmann L'Hirsch. There is a Frenchman in the office who won't go away. What shall I do?"

Slight pause for Peter's reply. Then to the Frenchman in French:

"The General says that you must leave the bureau immediately."

"Did the General speak politely?"

"Yes."

"Eh bien je sors."

I have already given a description of a scene which took place the first time I ever entered the bureau—and these sort of scenes used to happen daily and hourly. Whenever the Commandant lost his temper, which he did without fail every time, he threw his arms about, clenched his fists, gesticulated furiously, and shouted at the top of his voice. Soon after the Bojah affair, which I will describe later, when rows of this sort multiplied exceedingly, he was removed from the fort nothing less than a raving maniac with occasional sane intervals. In the court-martial which followed the Bojah case, the witnesses for the defense attempted to prove that the insane behavior of Hauptmann L'Hirsch was the main cause of all trouble in Fort 9. In an impartial court of justice, which this court-martial was not, I have not the smallest doubt that they would have succeeded in proving this, owing to L'Hirsch's behavior during the trial.

The food given us by the Germans was not only very nasty, but there was not enough of it to keep a man alive. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, as I know that a man can keep alive, though weak, with very little food. But lack of food to this extent, combined with the hardships of a winter at Fort 9, would, I am sure, be enough to kill most strong men. Every day each man received a loaf of bread, shaped like a bun, about 4-1/2 inches across the bottom and 2 inches in depth. It was of a dirty brown color and, though unpleasant, it was eatable. Some even said they liked it. I don't know what it was made of, but I should think from the taste that rye, sawdust, and potatoes formed the ingredients, the latter predominating. It was sometimes very stodgy, and sometimes sour, but on the whole was better bread than we received either at Gütersloh or Clausthal. Later on, the size of the loaf was reduced by more than a third and the quality deteriorated very much, the percentage of sawdust and other unpleasant ingredients being much increased. We never ate it unless we were very hard up, but, if left for a few days, it became as hard as a brick and was most useful as a firelighter. I remember an officer telling us that when he was a prisoner at Magdeburg in the early days of the war, the English prisoners had started playing rugger in the exercise yard with a piece of bread that had dropped in the mud. There was a terrible scene of indignation and excitement among the Germans. The guard turned out—fixed bayonets—charged—rescued the loaf—arrested every one, and I don't remember what happened after that, but all the criminals were severely punished. It must have been terrible to have been a prisoner in those early days. I heard hundreds of stories from the poor devils who were caught in 1914. Some of these stories were funny, some were filthy, that is to say, funny to a German mind, and some were enough to make a man swear, as many have sworn, never to speak to a German in peace time and never to show mercy to one in war.[2]