The cell was not so bad; in fact, it was much better than the quarters I had in camp, except that I was alone. I had a German orderly who took care of me, which convenience was something foreign in the regular camp. First appearances were so attractive that I thought it unfortunate I hadn’t discovered it before. In the morning the interpreter came around to see how things were going along. I told him “Fine, except that I wanted something to eat,” an habitual complaint among prisoners. There was the rub, for he informed me that when in solitary imprisonment in jail you only receive a portion of German food and that under no circumstances are you allowed any supplemental food from the Red Cross.
So, about nine o’clock this orderly brought me my breakfast which consisted of a bowl of Ersatz coffee and that was all. Believe me, the scarcity left a funny empty feeling in my stomach that decided the question at once—bribery it would be.
In the afternoon, when one of the calaboose corporals came around on his hourly inspection, I figured that he was a pretty good guy to play up to, so I knocked the old boy sick by offering him a pipeful of my real, American tobacco, which had been given me by a fellow prisoner, Lieutenant Shea of the 26th Division, who handled the Red Cross supplies at Karlsruhe. Shea was a real guy; he was fearless and while under very strict German regulations, he always allowed his staunch Americanism to be seen by Germans and Americans indiscriminately. This German Corporal had a whopper of a pipe for he made a big hole in my already slim sack and tobacco was as scarce as desert icebergs. How his eyes sparkled when he lighted it. These Germans had been smoking ground cabbage leaves for almost four years and were getting mighty tired of it.
“Sehr gut, sehr gut,” he ejaculated many times, sniffing the old time aroma.
Then, he warmed up and we got to talking. It finally dwindled from the war generally to our own family histories. He was in great distress. He had lost four sons in the war, and what he considered much worse, his two daughters would probably never be able to get husbands, for so many men had been killed. I thoroughly sympathized with him and agreed that it was all wrong to require such a sacrifice of him. Then he told me what his army pay was—it was very small—and he said he had been in the war five years. I told him how much the American soldiers received, which surprised him very much and seemed fabulous.
His understanding was that only the poor people had gone to war for America—the sons of the rich men stayed at home; and further, that practically all Americans of German descent had absolutely refused to take up arms against the Fatherland. I refuted this latter remark as well as the first—I told him that both my father and mother were German, having both been born in Berlin, and that my father was a very wealthy man, but I had to go into the service because all the young men had to become soldiers—the rich and poor alike had gone into the war and it didn’t make any difference whether they were German-Americans, or just plain Americans, they had all gone. So, he asked me what I did before the war, and being a pretender for the purpose I had in mind, I assumed a thoroughly shocked attitude at such a question, and informed him that before the war, my father being very rich, I didn’t do anything except go to college as “dad” came across with twenty thousand marks a year for spending money alone. The old boy’s eyes popped open to the size of an owl’s. He thought such an allowance fabulous and criminally extravagant. I filled him full of a lot of this hot air about the war, and especially my own financial stability, for I expected to sooner or later establish my credit with him.
We parted the very best of friends and to cinch it I gave him another pipeful of tobacco. The next morning the rather expected happened; he came to talk some more and to further test my depleted supply of Red Cross tobacco. Our second conversation ended with my parting with seventy-five marks cash, and a promissory note for seven thousand five hundred marks, payable three months after the war, in consideration for which the old boy was to leave the outer latch open that night and slip me a screw driver with which to manipulate the inner latch, and, at my request, he arranged a guard and that afternoon I went out and took my first exercise. The guard was a measly, withered-up shrimp, who spoke quite a little English, as he had been in America. His knowledge of American people and of American customs gave me a new field of activity. He told me that he was on guard that night around this same area, about eleven o’clock, so I cautiously sounded him out as to whether he was particularly scrupulous or whether he might accept a little bribe. Laughingly, he told me that like all other men in the world he supposed that he had his price, but that it was high enough that it could not possibly interest me.
“Well,” I said, manifesting surprise, “you’ve heard of my father, haven’t you, since you’ve been in America?”
“No,” he said.
“What!” I ejaculated. “Oh, you certainly have heard of J. P. Morgan, Haslett & Co., of Wall Street.”