These notices, which threaten the civilian population with heavy penalties if they exchange any words with the prisoners, are familiar all over Germany, but I did not expect to find them in that small village.
My neutral friend thought it would make a nice photograph if I would stand under the notice, which I did after a cautious survey showed that the coast was clear.
As I did so a Russian came out of the barn and said, in rather bad
German, "Going to have your photograph taken?" I replied, in
German, "Yes."
He heard me speaking English to my friend, and then, looking up and down the street each way to see if we were being watched, he addressed me in English with a strong Cockney accent.
"You speak English, then?" I said.
"I am English," he replied. "I'm an English prisoner."
"Then what are you doing in a Russian uniform?"
"It is the only thing I could get when my own clothes wore out." Keeping a careful eye up and down the street, he told us his story. He was one of the old Expeditionary Force; was taken at Mons with five bullet wounds in him, and, after a series of unpublishable humiliations, had been drafted from camp to camp until he had arrived at this little village, where, in view of the German policy of letting all the population, see an Englishman, he was the representative of his race in that community. "The local M.P." he called himself, in his humorous way.
Robinson Crusoe on his island was not more ignorant of the truth about the great world than that man, for, while he had learnt a few daily expressions in German, he was unable to read it. The only information he could gather was from the French, Belgian, and Russian prisoners with him, and some he got by bribing one of the Landsturm Guards with a little margarine or sugar out of his parcel from England. He was full of the battle of Mons and how badly he and his comrades in Germany felt at the way they had been left unsupported there. None the less, though alone, with no Englishman for miles, living almost entirely on his parcels, absolutely cut off from the real facts of the war, hearing little but lies, he was as calmly confident of the ultimate victory of the Allies as I am.
I asked him if he heard from home.