FORTRESS OF INGOLSTADT
BAVARIA
“FORT Nº. 9”
The living-rooms assigned to the prisoners were a series of tunnel-shaped cells, running along the north and south fronts of the fortress. These were connected by a long stone corridor, and divided into two wings by the main entrance, as shown on the plan. Each cell was connected to its neighbour by a small archway, which had been partitioned off in order to make separate compartments. These partitions were in some cases made of wood, in others they had been bricked up. The cells were twenty-six feet long by fifteen feet broad, and contained six officers each. Thus, with six beds, a dining-table, a cooking-stove (supplied by ourselves), and a space set apart to act as a kitchen and scullery, there was not very much room. The roof being arched like a tunnel, it was not possible to get the full benefit of the floor-space, since one could not stand upright if near the walls. These walls were made of granite, badly whitewashed over and exuding moisture. During any kind of damp weather the festoons of cobwebs which helped to adorn the ceiling glistened like a long grotto. On one side of the cells a small drain, excavated out of the wall, acted as a passage for the waters above. This drain opened out into the cell by a small trap-door, through which one could both hear and see the continual drip, drip of water, which in rainy weather formed itself into a small stream, occasionally flooding over into the cell. At all times a large ring of damp covered the floor in its proximity.
As before explained, the cells were approached by a long stone corridor running parallel with them, lighted by skylights at every forty or fifty yards, which pierced upwards through the earthworks above them. These, however, admitted very little light, except when the sun was shining. One was always in danger of bumping up against somebody walking in the opposite direction; in fact, a good many hard knocks were received in this way. The latrines were situated at the bottom of each of these corridors. This is not a subject which one cares to enlarge upon, but in this history it is necessary, in order to form a correct idea of the conditions under which we lived. These latrines consisted of a mere hole in the stone floor, with no form of drainage. Consequently the atmosphere in the corridor became at times almost unbearable, since the corridor acted as a sort of flue to the latrines, with which it was directly connected, the final result of this being that, when officers passed in and out of these rooms, a certain amount of the disgusting odour penetrated into the cells. Thus we had to sleep, feed, and live in one of these cells, attacked from inside by insanitary conditions, living in a dirty, damp, badly lighted stone cell, menaced from the outside by mosquitoes and miasma rising off the waters of the moat, on to which the cells looked through very heavily barred windows. The floors were made of asphalt, which struck cold into one’s very marrow, so that the majority of us were always stiff with rheumatism.
At first we were allowed to take exercise in the hollows marked X and Y in the plan, also to walk round the ramparts of the protecting earthworks. But this was very soon put a stop to, owing to an attempt to escape over the moat; and, finally, the only exercise-ground allowed us was that marked Z on the plan, immediately beneath the drawbridge and main entrance, a space a little larger than a tennis-court for some three hundred of us to exercise in. To the reader it must seem almost incredible that even a Hun would incarcerate a prisoner of war in a hell-hole such as this, immediately after having undergone a very serious operation; but so it was.