Like a madman I rolled about on my couch. When I thought of how different things might have been, of all I had hoped for, and how I had pictured my future, I gave way to utter despair, and helpless fury brought the tears coursing down my cheeks without my being able to check them.
Oh, longing for home—dreadful longing! But during that night I was not the only sufferer.
Pale faces with wide-open eyes stared at the ceiling, and suppressed sobbing was smothered in the blankets. The next morning, at four o’clock, we were suddenly awakened. The English non-commissioned officers went through the rooms and yelled out an order that all German prisoners had to get ready to march off in twenty minutes’ time to sail by the next boat to England.
To England! But that was impossible! Were we not Swiss? Had we not to see our Consul on that very day? All our efforts broke against the stolid, imperturbable calm of the English. We quickly collected our property and, exactly half an hour later, the civilian prisoners, numbering fifty-six, surrounded by a hundred heavily armed English soldiers, were marched out into the bright morning.
But we wanted to prove to the English that our pride was unbroken. With a clear and ringing sound, intensified by the anger that was burning within us, we poured forth “The Watch on the Rhine,” flinging its notes up to the skies.
A huge transport, filled to overflowing with English troops, awaited us below. We had to run the gauntlet through a narrow passage that was formed for us in the great crowd of travellers and those who had come to see them off. But I must admit that nobody molested us, and that no word of disparagement reached our ears. Room for us was made in silence, in silence we were allowed to pass, even here and there we encountered a look of commiseration and regret. On board, in the front part of the cargo deck, a space had been partitioned off and sparsely furnished with benches, tables and hammocks.
There stood two sentries with fixed bayonets; there was another couple near the hatch over our heads. When the latter was closed down from outside, we sat as in a trap. The portholes of our habitation were blinded by iron shutters, so that none of us should be able to look out or flash signals. After a short time a slight tremor ran through the ship, the engines started, and our swimming prison, rising and sinking slightly, drifted out into the open sea.
The journey lasted for days. We sat, closely guarded, shut up in our room. Once a day we were allowed on deck to get a breath of fresh air. A most primitive lavatory had been erected on the fore-deck with a few boards, and whoever wanted to use it had to report himself to the sentry. Only one person at a time was allowed to appear on deck for this purpose. The food was good—real sailors’ rations—especially the bread, the butter and the abundant supply of excellent jam. We beguiled the time away by reading, story-telling; above all, we discussed our future from all points of view, and what lay in store for us in England. The two sentries, who always kept watch below, soon became quite friendly, and we often frightened the poor Tommies into fits by tales of what happened on the Western Front.
Rough weather greeted us in the Bay of Biscay. It was a dreadful state of affairs for the fifty-six of us shut up in that restricted space, without light or air, and the majority sea-sick. The sentries, and the English soldiers who brought us our food, however, suffered most, and presented a pitiful spectacle. But when we got into the Channel the crew was seized with general nervousness and agitation. Drills with life-belts were held daily, our recreation-hour on deck was suspended, and the English soldiers never stopped questioning us fearfully in regard to our U-boats! And didn’t we make it hot for them!
At last, after ten days, we landed at Plymouth. When the chain cable rattlingly uncoiled itself, and we knew that we were safe in port and had escaped U-boats, we watched through the bulkhead the English soldiers falling on their knees and singing hymns of praise and gratitude for their salvation from the German submarines.