We watched the poor fellows until the last of the “rear guard” had hobbled past.
“La glorieuse Armée Britannique!” observed M——. I looked to see if he was smiling; but he wasn’t. He meant no sarcasm.
I will leave the first wretched months of captivity—which I like neither to remember nor to recall to other erstwhile Gefangener—for that simple, more tolerable life which most of us found on the German farms.
It was the night after my first day’s work on a farm, way up in the village of Kossebade, Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg. I lay nestled in a soft feather bed, for the first time in many months, thinking over the events of the past month and summing up the extent of my good luck.
I had found the people of the household, at first hand, to be reasonable creatures and I couldn’t grumble at the hardness of the work. I was particularly astonished at the five meals of substantial food a day!
I thought, too, of the men captured with me and how much worse they must be faring. Three hundred of them, I knew, had gone to Lille to work behind the German line. I had stood at the camp gate to bid them goodbye as they marched away, for I knew them almost to a man. Poor fellows, still without help from England, they hobbled away in their rags and “clogs,” and tattered uniforms (in the middle of January) with their three slices of bread for a two days’ journey, in one hand.
But could I believe my ears! They were singing!—for Tommy always sings when breaking camp—“Here We Are, Here We Are, Here We Are Again,” it was, and they sang it right lustily.
I thought less painfully of the comrades which I had left in my last camp—my room-mates, Fred, Charley and Jack. I wondered if Jack was still “cleaning up” at pontoon, if Fred was getting his parcels again, and if Charley was still making those famous “burgoo” puddings.
At last my thoughts drifted inevitably across the sea and home, and I dreamt of home afterward. Indeed, the next morning I could not tell where my thoughts had left off and my dream had begun.
