OUR TASKS
We had many different kinds of work to do. Sometimes we were water-carriers, and had to get up at four in the morning, go down to the river, and keep on ladling up water from a hole in the ice until we had filled a big barrel. This journey had to be repeated several times a day. Or we would have to stand for hours chopping wood, or make long journeys to the wood-stacks to fetch fuel for the camp. In the intense cold these tasks would have been severe enough in any case, but we were ill prepared for them. At the best we had only summer clothes on, none of us had any protection for the ears or nose against frostbite, many had no gloves, while a few had not even soles to their boots. It was no use reporting these things, our sergeant used to drive us away in a fury. The Russians were humaner and would often send us back with our tasks half done, because they saw that the cold was too much for us.
Our life at Stretensk was full of tragedies, but I think the first is the most awful to remember. One of us, who had no gloves, had been forced to carry wood long distances through the cold, and his hands were badly frostbitten. The sinews perished and seemed to shrivel up, and he became unable to use his fingers. As a consequence he could not louse himself, as his fingers could neither grasp anything nor press even a louse to death. He became so verminous that in places the insects stood on him ten deep. His “corporalschaft,” fearing for themselves, expelled him from their midst. He pilgrimed all over the barracks, seeking a place where he might lay his head, [but] was everywhere driven off with contumely and insult. The floor being too wet even for him to sleep on, he at last found an asylum in a sort of dustbin, in which the refuse of the barracks was removed every morning. He lived absolutely alone, like a leper. His food was set apart for him every day, and he was jealously watched lest he should come too near. The self-loathing peculiar to verminousness seemed to eat up his moral fibre, and he acquiesced in his isolation as if it were quite proper. Now and again, indeed, he would make timid advances, with a pitiful smile, but he was always repulsed. The last time I saw him, he was sitting on the snow in the full blaze of the noonday sun, clad in a smart uniform he had just received, and feebly trying with his palsied hands to brush off the lice that had already begun to collect on his new clothes. That evening he was taken to hospital with high fever, and in two days he was dead, literally destroyed by lice.
RED CROSS
But one day the barracks was swept and tidied up as it never had been before, and each of us was sprinkled with some disinfectant or other. We were at a loss to interpret these signs, when it was suddenly whispered that a German Red Cross sister had come on an official tour of inspection. As she entered, we all stood up to honour her. In that remote and inclement land, amid all the dangers with which we were surrounded, not a man of us but was moved at the sight of a fellow-countrywoman, speaking our own language, and bringing with her into the squalor of our barracks some suggestion of home. Her opening words deepened the impression. “I have come,” she said, “to remind you that you are not forgotten in the Fatherland.” And then she went on with the professional society lady’s fine air and as if she were only repeating words learnt off by heart: “Your Kaiser does not forget you, and the dear Crown Prince thinks of you every day.” A thrill of contempt ran through our ranks. We had been expecting the bread of sympathy, and she offered us the stone of an aristocrat’s patronage. In one respect it saved the situation, for it calmed our feelings and enabled us both to speak to her and watch her depart unconcerned. She did obtain some alleviation of our lot; for instance, she persuaded the Russians to dismiss and punish the soldier who kept the bath-house and had to be tipped before he would allow us inside. Arrangements were also made that the N.C.O.s and educated privates were to receive small sums of money, varying according to their rank. The common soldier was to receive nothing. Our working-men were justly incensed at this favouritism, because their need was just as great as anybody else’s. The working-men have good memories for injustices of this kind, and in the final settlement with the bourgeois they will not be forgotten. The arrangement did not last long, and after a month or so everybody was thrown on his own resources, unless he chose to beg from the Red Cross. I understand that the British Government allowed all of their prisoners in Germany without exception a weekly sum. When our working-men heard how much better the English prisoners were treated, they became very bitter against their Government. I asked the sister to get the Russians to separate the educated soldiers from the uneducated, as had been done with the Austrians. I said we were quite willing to work, but we wanted to be our own masters. She made some excuse, and the proposal dropped for the time. When the working-men heard about it, they were furious and threatened to kill the man who had brought it forward, if they ever discovered his name.
PRISON OUTFIT
And then one great day there arrived two Swedish Red Cross sisters with unlimited money at their command and wonderful parcels for us all. We received a complete outfit for prison life in Siberia, changes of warm linen, knitted helmets, gloves, boots, soap, towels, spoon, fork, basin, pencils, postcards, sewing-materials. Besides, there was for every one who desired it a uniform and a mantle. The old blue uniforms discarded for active service had been sent to clothe the prisoners of war. The Russian soldiers were amazed. They said, “When war started, we received a uniform and two changes of linen, and now these are all in rags and our Government gives us nothing. But you are prisoners of war, thousands of miles away from home, and you are as well looked after by your Government as if you were still at the front.” A great trade was done in the Red Cross gifts, especially when the parcels began to arrive from home, and the spring came with the warmer weather. Many a Russian soldier that year went to the front clad from head to foot in garments which had been collected for us through the loving self-sacrifice of the women of Germany. Those prisoners who kept their things were much more smartly dressed than the Russians set to guard them.
TYPHUS
But all these improvements came too late. Typhus had already got such a hold of the camp that it was impossible to stamp it out quickly; one could only let it run its course. The disease began in another camp on the hills overlooking Stretensk on the opposite side of the river. This camp had been built as a temporary summer residence for refugees; in winter it was next to impossible to heat the barracks or to fetch water. For days men would only be able to quench their thirst by breaking off the ice on the windows and sucking it. The first patients came down to our camp to be treated, and not finding a doctor ready to receive them, went all over the place looking for friends, and so brought infection to every barracks.
The horrors of Wittenberg have made the disease known to all English readers. The Germans call it “fleck-typhus,” i.e. spotted typhus, because on the third or fourth day small red spots appear on the forearm and other parts of the body. But until these spots appear, the disease is often hard to distinguish from influenza, and the doctors hesitated at first to put the patients in the typhus-ward, but kept them in an observation hospital instead. One man in an observation ward was sufficient to infect all the rest, so that many, who had only influenza to begin with, caught typhus at the hospital. This got to be known, and the men would not report themselves ill so long as they could contrive to stay in the barracks, which of course only spread the disease still further. There is a kind of delirium characteristic of typhus, in which the patient gets out of bed and seeks some place familiar to him. Often they used to get up, rush out into the icy Siberian night and go back to their barracks, thus again spreading the disease. Their comrades, in terror of their lives, used to chase them out, and sometimes they would be unable to reach their hospitals, their strength would fail, and they would fall dead on the path. Typhus searches out the weak parts of the body and its sequelæ may be almost as dangerous as the disease itself. Many men, after finishing with typhus, went on to inflammation of the lungs, enteric, or tuberculosis, others were partially paralysed, all will carry some mark of it down with them to their graves. After the epidemic had passed, the camp was full of cripples.