“Right away,” “cost price,” the enclitic “Yes-no” at the end of a sentence, and other absurdities abounded in his speech. “Cost price” was a particular favourite. You could get “cost price” jug for any period: or you could be “told something straight, yes cost price, I guess.” He cherished the idea that “cost price” represented what was plain and unequivocal, an index to the straight-dealing methods of alien saloon managers in far Milwaukee. Sometimes, when a grievance involved the use of technical English beyond his range, he would blind at us in German, which we infinitely preferred, as it gave the comedians an opportunity for looking uncomprehendingly asinine and shouting in chorus nichts verstehen (“don’t understand”), which infuriated him.
With Niemeyer first impressions were not actually unpleasing, as he had clear blue eyes and a voice which, as I have said, when under control was not unmusical. New arrivals at the camp, unless they had been forewarned or had had previous dealings with him, were inclined to size him up as a friendly, if over-familiar, old bounder.
He used to walk about with a retriever puppy, which was a source of considerable annoyance to its owner, as it was invariably on better terms with the prisoners-of-war, who used sometimes to feed it, than with himself. The only occasions on which he was ever seen to stoop was when bending down to coax the puppy to follow its rightful master.
He treated his dependants as beings of another world—“like dogs” would be too mild a term, for Niemeyer was quite restrained in his dealings with the puppy. He was never seen to return his men’s salutes; he only returned ours as the result of frequent protests. His conduct towards the British orderlies was just the same, except that his vituperation had to be done in English and with therefore more limited scope. To the British officers, except in his moods of Berserker fury, he would be either coldly polite or else offensively hail-fellow-well-met, as the mood took him. If he had any hobbies we did not hear of them. He neither walked nor rode nor indulged in any sport. Once in a blue moon he went for a drive. He was a bachelor, and was understood to loathe the sight of women. Whether he drank or drugged or gambled his many spare hours away at Holzminden is not known. We did not certainly identify him with literary tasks. The knowledge of his power was his main solace, and there is no doubt that he often stirred up trouble in the camp for the sake of trouble. To some such motive only could be ascribed his relentlessly literal interpretation of the Corps regulations. Under a reasonable régime these would never have been pressed. Even so, things at Holzminden would have gone smoothly enough if he had been a gentleman. It was the fact that even this modest provision had not been made on their account that goaded the British to an intense intolerance of the man and all his works; and he, in his turn, looked for moral support to the authority which, with full knowledge, had placed him where he was. Such was Captain of the Reserve Karl Niemeyer.
He adopted the policy of alleviating our numerous discomforts only by slow degrees or on the principle of two steps backward for each one forward. A long string of complaints was presented to him on the average about twice a week. The bath-house was at length completed, and the camp watch-dog was promptly lodged in it. When remonstrated with, Niemeyer explained that there was at present no room for the dog’s accommodation in the Kommandantur. So we continued bath-less for another month—those of us, at least, who could not face an icy plunge in the horse-troughs on the Spielplatz. When at length the bath-house was vacated and purged, it was found that only two of the showers were effective.
Somebody broke one of the electric lamps in the compound: all games were promptly stopped. This left us literally with no outlet for exercise except the monotonous “pound” in shorts and jersey round the camp enclosure, or a furtive game of fives at the end of one of the long corridors, for which it was not always easy to “book a court”!
The distribution of parcels was kept in the hands of the German personnel, and as a result hopeless chaos and congestion reigned. In all previous camps the British had efficiently organised the distribution of their own parcels, no light task in the days when supplies from home were unrationed and one recipient might claim as many as twenty parcels in a week. When the consignments diverted from other camps began to reach Holzminden, the German parcel room was packed from floor to ceiling with the accumulations. The most that Niemeyer would at first allow in the nature of English control in the parcel room was the services of two orderlies. The presence of a British officer in the parcel room, even on parole and for the express purpose of supervising and facilitating delivery, was only permitted when all other attempts to cope with the situation had failed.
It was the same with the tin rooms, and here a word of explanation is required. When a prisoner-of-war in Germany drew his parcel from home he might not, strictly speaking, merely walk off with it under his arm. This practice was winked at in many easy camps, but at Holzminden it was rigidly taboo. The regulations stipulated that every article should be strictly censored before issue. It was not enough to shake a tin to ascertain its non-contraband nature. It had to be opened by a German and its contents taken delivery of in a plate or bowl. And if the contents were solid, such as, for instance, a tinned ham, then that ham had to be cut, bisected, quartered, or “Crippened” into just so many fragments as would leave no room for doubt that a compass or a map or a file did not remain concealed. A ham or tongue, of course, was thus ruined. The German employees in the tin room loathed this desecration almost as much as we did; it gave them additional work and seemed to them to be an act of unreasoning vandalism. Poor devils! Some of them were honest, although undoubtedly some stole. But it must have been refined torture for them daily to sniff Elysium and lack its joy, daily to mutilate delicatessen such as they had not tasted for months and months, daily to handle forbidden delights. But they had to do it, for they never knew when the Commandant would not spring a surprise visit on them. I have seen him take out a penknife on such occasions and hack practically into mincemeat a tongue which had been left comparatively whole, full of zest for the service of the Fatherland and threatening dire things to his staff if ever such an object was let off so lightly again.
But even the destruction of our food would have been tolerable if we could have got at it with reasonable ease; unfortunately the inadequacy of the arrangements extended to the cellars where the tin rooms were located. At the beginning of things there was one tin room for the requirements of the whole camp. The tins were brought down from the parcel room in wheelbarrows and piled on racks in the tin room; there was no British supervision; there were no lockers or partitions, and the German staff could not read or understand English. It was hardly to be wondered at, therefore, that before a week was out the room was in complete confusion, accentuated each day as the intake exceeded the offtake.
To get your tins opened you had to take your turn in a queue. To be the first man in this queue it was necessary, as a rule, to put in an appearance about half-past seven in the morning. The last applicant was usually served just before evening roll-call. All day the queue crawled. It was a case of queue-crawling or missing a day, English tins or German rations, and the inner man won. The head of the queue was at the tin room door. The rest of it coiled along the damp passage which traversed the cellar floor, it sat and read on the steps of the staircase that led down to the passage, often it overflowed right into and out of the doorway of the Kaserne. It was a mournful dispirited queue in those days. The Germans took five or ten minutes to serve each man and it was even odds that your tins wouldn’t be there. And if you were very unlucky you might have an accident with your tray on the return journey, upset your plates, and have to begin all over again.