We were also assigned to the repugnant duty of cleaning out the latrines, which were of the most primitive character, and which coincided with the facilities which one might anticipate among savages but not in such a boasting civilised country as Germany. Both these duties were loathsome, but I am afraid no one engaged on the tasks would be able to express a conclusive opinion as to which was the worse.
The duties being so varied, operations often took us a little way from the camp. The chance to get away even for a brief period from our depressing and monotonous surroundings was seized with avidity. Unfortunately, we feared that this system of forced labour would culminate in our being assigned to the work of tending the crops. But we made up our minds irrevocably to do no such thing no matter how we might be punished. The Germans had failed to nourish us in an adequate manner, and we were certainly not going to enable them to secure a sufficiency of food at our expense. Indeed, the one or two attempts which were made to impress us to toil on the land, proved highly disastrous because considerable damage was inflicted from our ignorance of agriculture and gardening.
Some of us were given the garden which belonged to the old General who had been in charge at Sennelager when we first arrived, to keep in condition. This official was an enthusiastic amateur gardener and cherished a great love for flowers. Seeing that during his régime we had received considerate treatment within limitations, we cherished no grudge against him. Again, the fact that his garden was to be kept going led us to hope that the duration of Major Bach's reign over us was merely temporary and that our former guardian would soon be returning. We knew that in such an event our lot would be rendered far easier, so we nursed his little plot of ground with every care and displayed just as much interest in its welfare as if it had been our own. But the old General never came back to Sennelager, at least not during my period of imprisonment there.
There was one party of British prisoners whom Major Bach singled out for especially harsh and brutal treatment. The invincible High Seas Fleet upon one of its sporadic ventures into salt water during the very earliest days of the war, stumbled across a fleet of Grimsby trawlers unconcernedly pursuing their usual peaceful occupation. The whole of the fishermen were made prisoners and were dispatched to Sennelager.
But Major Bach stedfastly refused to believe that they were simple fishermen pursuing their ordinary tasks. To his narrow and distorted mind a man on a trawler was only toiling in the sea for one or both of two purposes. The one was laying mines; the other was mine-sweeping. Consequently he decided to mark these unfortunate hardened sea-salts in a distinguishing manner which was peculiarly his own, thereby rendering them conspicuous and possible of instant recognition, while in the event of an escape being attempted, no difficulty would be experienced in identifying and catching the runaways. Each man was submitted to the indignity of having one half of his head shaved clean, one half of his moustache removed, or one half of his beard cut away. The men branded in this manner presented a strange spectacle, and one which afforded Major Bach endless amusement. In addition a flaming big "Z" was printed boldly upon the back of the coat of each man. This letter comprises the initial of the German word "zivil," and means that the wearer is neither a criminal nor a military prisoner. It will be observed, however, that the Commandant declined to recognise these fishermen as being naval prisoners, which somewhat contradicted his assertion concerning their alleged crime. At a subsequent date, I might mention, every civilian prisoner was branded with the "Z" in a similar manner.
These fishermen were watched very closely, were hunted and harassed at every turn without mercy, and all things considered, experienced an abnormally hard time. Up to the day of my release from Ruhleben on December 6, 1915, but one of those old salts had been released, and had been returned to his country. We were informed at Sennelager that the authorities were determined, at all hazards, to keep these "diabolical fiends" as they were termed, in durance vile, until the termination of the war. However, one of them fell seriously ill after his transference from Sennelager to Ruhleben. His condition became so serious as to bring about his hurried exchange, the authorities dreading that he would die while in their charge, and thus adversely affect the low death-rate reputation of a German prison camp!
Our hair was growing long, owing to the absence of cutting facilities. Mine had almost reached my shoulders, but I was extremely careful to submit it to a thorough wash every morning because I shared the fear of many of my companions that, owing to the congestion of the camp, we should be overrun with vermin. Undoubtedly Major Bach also anticipated such a state of affairs, because one morning he appeared upon parade with a pair of clippers which he had unearthed from somewhere and curtly commanded every man to submit to a hair-cut.
The position of official barber to the camp was assigned to an Englishman named L——, who I think might be accurately described as our official humorist. Armed with this weapon, and although absolutely ignorant of the new calling thrust upon him, delighted to secure some change to the monotonous round of toil, L—— entered upon his work with commendable zest. But he construed the duty into a form of amusement, and played sorry tricks with the heads which came into his hands. Some he shaved so clean as to present the appearance of a billiard ball, but others he evidently considered to be worthy of French poodle treatment. He took a humorous delight in executing some of the most fantastic and weird designs it is possible to imagine, much to the discomfort and chagrin of his unwilling clients. Still his quaint expression of craftmanship and artistry contributed somewhat to the restricted hilarity and mirth of the camp.
I, myself, sternly refused to entrust my head to L——'s hands. I naturally thought that I should receive a smart punishment for thus flying in the face of the autocratic order which had gone forth, but strange to say I found Major Bach somewhat reasonable on this point. This is about the only redeeming feature I can offer concerning Major Bach's rule over us. I think, however, that he was somewhat more closely observant than was generally supposed to be the case, because those of us who escaped the hair-cutting precaution happened to be the very prisoners who were unremitting in their efforts to preserve unassailable personal cleanliness. No doubt L—— was disappointed to be deprived of a few possible heads upon which to demonstrate his quaint skill, but we succeeded in escaping from his clutches.
Although vermin did overrun the camps, not only of Sennelager, but of other prisons of whose interiors I made the acquaintance, I can assert truthfully that I was never troubled with the unsolicited company of body lice, and only once or twice discovered one or two unwelcome strangers in my hair. The coarse and harsh German soap effectively rendered my hair untenantable. But some of the prisoners were overwhelmed and presented terrifying spectacles. It was here that the superiority of the Britisher in matters pertaining to personal hygiene towered over all the varying races by which he was surrounded, not even excepting the Germans. From our own experience and observation it was only too palpable that the Teuton soldiers are quite as careless in this connection as the less enlightened peoples of south-eastern Europe, because they were as severely infested—if not more so—with vermin.