Carlsruhe Lager was located on the spot where a hundred people, mostly women and children, were killed during an air raid on Corpus Christi Day, 1916. A few days before the second anniversary our mess was at tea in the hut, when Father Daniels, the German priest, arrived in search of the Roman Catholic padre, and partook of a cup. Our talk was of raids, of which there had been a succession, and of the air raid in particular.
“It happened,” said Father Daniels, “just outside the window of this hut; there, where the pole is.” The pole is only a few feet away. It is used as a bumble-puppy pole now. The trees around still bear marks of the explosion; pieces of shell and shrapnel embedded in the stems. There was no Corpus Christi procession, however, as so often claimed; simply a crowding for admission into a circus and menagerie. Old Maier, the German Lazarette orderly, had a son wounded that day.
Carlsruhe and Mannheim both suffered heavily from our aircraft during the period of my captivity. In one week there were eight raids—one every day and two on Sundays, so to speak. In the early hours of the morning we would awaken to the melancholy music of the warning sirens, and, getting out of bed and into slippers, would find all the heavens intersected by searchlights.
Soon the shrapnel would begin to fall heavily into the courtyard, the pieces striking the ground and the roofs of our huts very viciously. In the morning we could usually pick up a large amount of shrapnel, some of the ragged shreds being almost a foot in length. During the night the sounding of the air-raid warning signal was customarily greeted by ironical cheers from the Allied prisoners; during a day attack we would stand out in the court and watch proceedings, although, with a commendable anxiety for our safety, the German authorities would urge us to take cover.
One such air raid took place about nine o’clock on the morning of the 31st May, the day after the festival of Corpus Christi. An arrangement had been arrived at between the belligerents, I understand, that no bombing should take place on that day, but, in their usual absent-minded fashion, the Germans had committed a misdemeanour. So here were our boys over first thing with a gentle reminder. This consisted of ten bombs—a sort of decalogue of imperative “thou shalt nots”—several of which fell quite near to the camp. Heavy damage was done, and there were a considerable number of casualties among the civilians. We were so unhappy, however, as to witness one of our ’planes brought down in combat, and later we learned that a second machine had fallen.
FUNERAL OF TWO BRITISH AVIATORS
This last fell into a marsh, and neither the craft nor the crew were recovered. The other two men, however, were buried the following afternoon. Besides representation from all the other nationalities in camp, the funeral party included twelve British officers. After selection of the aviator officer prisoners and the senior ranks five places were still available, and these we balloted for. I drew a blank, but R., successful, was not too keen about going, and I secured a gift of his place, helping him to a decision, if truth must be told, by a little present of two tins, each containing one hundred cigarettes!
This was my second time outside the gates during the whole of my seven months’ captivity at Carlsruhe. The journey was the same as before, though now was visible the whole wondrous work of Nature in these last few months of spring and early summer. In church I sat in the second row immediately behind General von Rinck, and could not help observing how his grey hair and his grey, deeply-engraven face, harmonized and were at one with the field-grey of his uniform, but that in that face there was no note of answering colour to the red facings of his tunic, or to the finely-arranged ribbons of his many decorations and distinctions.