The Escaping Club

by A. J. Evans

A diet consisting entirely of butterless and saltless potatoes in various forms became after three or four days extremely tedious. It is quite impossible to eat enough of them to satisfy one's hunger. After a gorge of potatoes one is distended but still hungry. I forget how long the famine lasted—about ten days, I think, though I remember very well the arrival of a cartload of parcels which relieved the situation just when things began to get serious. It arrived on a Saturday, and the Germans said that they would be given out on Monday, as a certain time was necessary for sorting and registering the parcels. To starving men this delay was quite intolerable, and the prisoners adopted such a threatening attitude that the Commandant considered it wisest to give out a small portion of the parcels to keep us going till Monday.

Of course we might have asked the Germans to supply us with food when we were short, but I don't think such a course was contemplated seriously by anybody.

Perhaps it may be considered that the kindly Germans, knowing that their prisoners were nearing starvation, should have insisted on supplying us with food. But the Germans of Fort 9 were not accustomed to confer favors on us—if they had offered them we should have refused—and I have no doubt that they considered a little hunger very good for us.

So much for the famine; our parcels for the rest of the time I was in Germany arrived in large quantities.

About this time, on the strength of the convention agreed to between the English and the German governments, we obtained from the very unwilling Germans the privilege of going on walks for an hour or two a week on parole.

For the rest of the time I was at Fort 9 the parties of English and Russian prisoners, but not French, as I believe they had no such convention with the Germans, exercised this privilege once and sometimes twice a week, accompanied by an unarmed German N.C.O., who under these circumstances sometimes became quite human.

The walks were very dull indeed, as the country round the fort is very uninteresting. However, it was certainly a relief to get out of the place every now and then. The only other way in which we ever got out of the fort legitimately was when we were sent for from Ingolstadt for preliminary inquiries concerning a court-martial, or to make a statement concerning the vigilance of the sentry past whom we had escaped. We always did our best to defend the unfortunate sentries, but I am afraid that they almost invariably were heavily punished.

The next incident of any interest was a turbulent affair which has become known to the one-time inmates of Fort 9 as the Bojah case. As I was not involved to any great extent in this storm in a teacup, I have rather a confused idea of what happened and why it happened.

I am not even sure how it started, but I believe the original cause was a very mild and commonplace theft by Medlicott. A German carpenter was putting up some shelves in one of our living-rooms when Medlicott and I entered the room. Quite on the spur of the moment Medlicott picked up the carpenter's pincers when his back was turned and handed them to me. I put them in my pocket and walked out of the room and hid them. Before the pincers were missed Medlicott also followed me out of the room. No one else in the room had noticed the theft, and naturally denied it indignantly when accused by the carpenter. Apparently the carpenter, being very angry, instantly informed the Commandant. About ten minutes later we heard a fearful row in the passage outside, and we all came out of our rooms to see the fun. In the doorway of one of the rooms was a seething, shouting mob consisting of several sentries with fixed bayonets, the Feldwebel and half a dozen prisoners, mostly French, and the Commandant. They were all shouting at the top of their voices and pushing, and the Commandant was brandishing his arms and generally behaving like an enraged maniac. What the Frenchmen were doing in that room I am not quite clear, but I believe they had come into the room in which the carpenter had been after the latter had departed to report the loss of the pincers to the Commandant. When the Commandant arrived with his guard he insulted them and accused them of stealing the pincers and then ordered them back to their rooms. The Frenchmen—Kicq, Derobiere, Bojah, and a few others of the younger and more violent sort—were the last people in the world to take this sort of thing lying down; besides which they loved a row at any time for its own sake, and for once in a way they had right on their side. They denied the accusation and protested against the insults with some violence, and when ordered to their rooms by the Commandant refused to go unless they first had an apology. It is quite impossible to imagine the scene unless you realize the character of the Commandant. The one outstanding feature was his conspicuous lack of dignity and total inability to keep his temper. In his quiet moments he was an incompetent, funny bourgeois shopkeeper; when angry, as at this moment, he was a howling, raving madman. When the Frenchmen refused to move, the Commandant apparently ordered the Feldwebel to arrest them, and confused shouting followed, in the midst of which the Commandant hit the Feldwebel and, I believe, though I did not see it, also hit Bojah. There was a complete block in the doorway, and the passage was also blocked by a hand-cart, which happened to be there, and a large and cheering crowd of spectators. The sentries could not get in, and the Feldwebel and the Commandant, who were blocked in the doorway, could not move, and every one continued to shout. Medlicott, who loved this sort of thing, tried to barge into the scrimmage, and I only just prevented him being struck by a bayonet. Then Kicq managed to get close to the Commandant and call him a "cochon." Two sentries effected his arrest. After that, I really don't know how things got disentangled without bloodshed, but eventually the Germans retreated amidst yells of derision, with Bojah, Kicq, and Derobiere in their midst.

The English and French prisoners who had seen this affair decided that, as the Commandant's conduct had been unbecoming that of an officer, we would hold no further communication with him. Most of us were content to act up to this passively, but when Batty Smith was summoned to the office he informed the Commandant of the decision and walked out. Buckley and Medlicott also took the earliest opportunity of doing the same thing.