The Kantine and the Catering
We had a Kantine, run by a civilian named Herr Solomon, who, however, because of his dilatoriness, and an easy deferring until to-morrow of what should have been ordered to-day, was always known as “Morgen, Morgen!” The Kantine, which was open daily from 11 to 1, and 5 to 7 evening, contained a selection of commodities ranging from a lager beer—which was very essentially a Lager beer—to a solitary example of a variation of Sandow’s chest-expander, for which no purchaser was ever forthcoming. Something to expand a still lower compartment of our anatomy was what we were in continual search of.
HERR SOLOMON, THE KANTINE KEEPER.
The catering here, however, which was also in Herr “Morgen, Morgen’s” hands, marked a great advance on the Carlsruhe kitchen. The finer hand of femininity was quite apparent in the cooking, a number of women from the country being employed, and we usually were served with a soup which we could eat without loss of self-respect. Being in the centre of an agricultural district, we had a good supply of potatoes and certain vegetables, and when we were able to supplement these with a slice of bully, we did not do too badly.
“Much Reading——!”
Immediately on our arrival at Beeskow I was appointed to the enviable post of librarian, but found myself in the unenviable position of having no library. I accordingly placed upon the notice board the following urgent appeal:
“ONLY ONE BOOK!”
This rather tickled the camp, including the German officers, who immediately responded with a gift of some twenty volumes. Unfortunately, these were entirely in German, through which only one or two of the officers could even spell their way, but they were in the nature of a godsend to M. Bloch, a Russian dentist, who was the only foreign officer in camp, and who spoke German as fluently as one may speak that influent tongue. Pro tem., then, I considered myself as acting to him in the not onerous capacity of private librarian.