The Prisoners of Mainz

by Alec Waugh

Under the lens of the mendacious camera the entourage of the citadel presents a very pleasant aspect. The square looks bright and large, the rooms light and airy; from the top windows there is a delightful view of the Mainz steeples and of the Rhineland hills, and a fleeting glimpse can be caught of Heine’s bridge. But to the jaundiced eye of the Gefangener all this comeliness was illusion. In actual circumference the square measured about 400 yards, and it was too full of the ghosts of squad drill. On most of the walls were painted the head and shoulders of dummy targets, that a regiment of snipers had once used for rifle practice. The spirit of militarism was strong; and however delightful the Rhine may look when photographed from the top-story window of a tall block, it is less arcadian when viewed through a screen of wire netting. The whole place was littered with sentries, and barbed wire. For not one moment could one imagine one was free. At times even a sort of claustrophobia would envelop one. The desire to move was imperative, and the tall avenue of chestnuts seemed to rise furiously, as though they were sentinels that would some day draw all things to themselves.

Some of the rooms were, it is true, light and sunny. But the rooms in Block III were miserably dark. The windows were on a level with the ground on account of a moat that ran round the building, and in front a line of chestnuts shut out the sunlight. The rooms were long and narrow, with bars across the windows. At the end it was very often too dark to read; the window sill was the only place that provided enough light for a morning shave. From the outside and from the inside the block was like a dungeon, and the official photographs omitted to immortalise it.

The routine of the camp was very simple. At eight o’clock in the morning breakfast, consisting of coffee, was brought to the rooms. At half-past nine there was a roll-call. At twelve midday there was lunch in the mess-rooms; at three in the afternoon coffee was brought round to the rooms; at six there was supper in the mess-rooms. At nine the doors of the block were closed; at nine-thirty there was an evening roll-call; at eleven lights went out.

But for two fortunate contingencies those early days would have been almost unendurable. One of them was the arrival from Karlsruhe of Tarrant and Stone. During our first week every evening brought a draft of new arrivals; and among one of the later of these appeared Tarrant and Stone, staggering beneath the accumulated kit of fourteen months’ imprisonment. The change contented them little. After the shelter and privacy of a room for two, it was no joke to be dumped into the publicity of a room of ten. The creature comforts were missing. Naturally we showered sympathy. But as a practical philosophy altruism is a sadly broken reed. The pleasure at the prospect of their company quite outweighed the inconvenience that its presence had caused to them; and, besides that, they brought with them no small part of a library. The bookless days were over now. No more should I have to spend a whole morning over the only volume in the room—The Book of Common Prayer. No more should I have to go to the most extreme lengths of subservience to borrow Freckles or The Rosary.

The other piece of luck we had was in the weather. During the early days of May the square was bathed in a metallic heat; and as soon as roll-call was over a deck chair was pushed into the shade of a tree, where one could doze and read throughout the whole morning, and forget that one was hungry.

For those were hungry days. Indeed it is hard not to make the first two months a mere chronicle of sauerkraut. I honestly believe that the Germans gave us as much food as they could, considering we were “useless mouths”: but it was precious little. After all it is one thing to be reduced to short rations by slow gradations, but it is a very different thing to be taken from the flesh-pots of France where one eats a great deal too much, to a vegetable diet that was not nearly sufficient. There was only one proper meal a day: lunch. We then got two plates of soup, three or four potatoes, and a spoonful or two of beetroot or cabbage. The effect lasted for three hours. Supper rarely provided potatoes; usually two plates of thin soup, and sauerkraut or barley porridge. In addition there was a fortnightly issue of sugar, a weekly issue of jam, and a bi-weekly issue of bread. On this last issue the Gefangener’s fate depended. Life simplified itself into an attempt to spread out a small loaf of bread over four days. It did not often succeed. On the first day one carefully marked out on the crust the limit at which each day’s plunderings must stop. The loaf was divided, first of all, into four equal parts, then each quarter was again marked out in divisions; so much for breakfast, so much for tea, so much for supper. It did not work. Each day removed its neighbour’s landmark. By the third day only a little edge of crust remained. It was demolished by tea-time, and nothing quite equalled the depression of the evening of that third day. The worst time was at eight o’clock. The effect of a slender supper had by then worn off, and there was the comforting reflection that for sixteen hours there was not the least likelihood of being able to lay hand on any food; and the dizziness of a breakfastless morning is an experience no one would wish to indulge in twice.

They were strange days, and strange things happened. Money ceased to have any value unless it could be turned into edible substance. Those with big appetites carried on a sort of secret service to obtain bread; fabulous sums were offered for a quarter of a loaf of bread that contained less flour than potatoes; and, at a time when a mark was worth a shilling, there were those who were prepared to pay seventy-five marks for a loaf; and twenty marks for half a loaf was the lowest rate of exchange.

One knew then the emotions of the man with threepence in his pocket; who is feeling ravenously hungry and knows that, if he spends that threepence on dinner, he will have nothing left for the next day. It is an alternative that in terms of brown bread has presented itself to every prisoner of war.