Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons: Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben

by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot

To the members of the Roman Catholic persuasion the brow-beating, badgering, baiting and buffeting of the helpless priests acted as a red rag to a bull. But what could they do? Protest was merely so much wasted energy. Communication with anyone outside the camp was absolutely impossible. To have reviled Major Bach for his cruelty and carefully planned barbarity would only have brought down upon us further and more terrible punishment of such ferocity as would have made everyone long for the respite of the grave.

But the priests could not be broken, no matter to what physical and mental suffering they were subjected. Even Major Bach discovered to his chagrin that his devilish ingenuity had encountered an insuperable obstacle. To wreak his revenge he now compelled the Fathers to carry out all the dirtiest and most revolting work in the camp—duties so repulsive as to be beyond description. But the good men never murmured. They did exactly as they were bidden, and even the guards at last appeared to realise the fact that their fertility in torment was of no avail in attempting to infuriate their meek charges.

Major Bach, however, was by no means cast down at his failures. One morning he ordered the twenty-two priests to be paraded. They were then loaded up with a variety of cumbersome and heavy implements—spades, picks, shovels, and such like. Each load would have taxed the strength of a young man in the pink of condition and strength to carry, and yet here were old men, ranging between sixty and seventy years, compelled to shoulder such burdens. But they did it.

An order was rapped out, the guard wheeled, and the tiny party moved off. We discovered afterwards that they were marched three miles along the sandy road in the blazing sun to a point where they were roughly bidden to dig a huge pit.

Throughout the morning, and without a moment's respite, they were forced to ply their tools, their task-masters standing over them and smartly prodding and threatening them with their rifles if they showed signs of falling from fatigue, or if they failed to maintain the expected rate of progress. To such old men, who probably had never lifted the smallest and lightest tool for many years, if ever, it was a back-breaking task. However, they clung dutifully to their work until the hour of twelve rang out.

Now they were re-marshalled, their tools were re-shouldered, and they were marched back to camp for the mid-day meal. By the time they reached the barracks all the other prisoners had consumed the whole of the available soup. There was nothing for the priests. It was explained that they should have hurried so as to have arrived at an earlier moment. Then they would have received their due proportion. Meals could not be kept waiting for dawdlers, was the brutal explanation of the authorities. The priests must be made to realise the circumstance that they were not staying at an hotel. This, by the way, was a favourite joke among our wardens.

The priests bore visible signs of their six miles' tramp through crumbling scorching sand and under a pitiless sun, as well as of their laborious toil excavating the large pit. But their distressed appearance did not arouse the slightest feeling of pity among their tormentors. Being too late for the meal they were re-lined up, and under a changed guard were marched back again to the scene of their morning's labour.

Naturally, upon reaching the pit, they concluded that they would have to continue the excavation. But to their intense astonishment the officer in charge ordered them to throw all the excavated soil back again into the hole! This was one of the most glaring examples of performing a useless task, merely to satisfy feelings of savagery and revenge, that I encountered in Sennelager, although it was typical of Major Bach and his methods. He took a strange delight in devising such senseless labours. Doubtless the authorities anticipated that the priests would make some demur at being compelled to undo the work which they had done previously with so much effort and pain. But if this was the thought governing the whole incident the officials were doomed to suffer bitter disappointment. The priests, whatever they may have thought, silently accepted the inevitable, and displayed as much diligence in filling the pit as they had shown a few hours before in digging it.

Still the afternoon's shovelling caused them greater physical hardship than the plying of the pick in the morning. They had been denied a mid-day meal, and their age-enfeebled physique proved barely equal to the toil. A basin of black acorn coffee and a small fragment of hard brown bread cannot by any manner of means be construed into strong sustenance for such a full day's work. During the afternoon one or two were on the verge of collapse from hunger and fatigue. But their indomitable spirit kept them up and the pit was duly filled.

By the time the labour had been completed the evening was advancing. For the fourth time that day they shouldered their burden of tools and set out on the three miles tramp to camp.