Wounded and a Prisoner of War, by an Exchanged Officer

by Malcolm V. Hay

The country now presented a melancholy sight, and as the railway line itself had been much damaged, the speed of the train was reduced to a crawl over the numerous temporary wooden railway bridges.

In Belgium the railway line was always strongly guarded, while in France I hardly noticed any troops except at the railway stations. From the moment we entered Belgium it was evident that a great number of soldiers were billeted in the villages and towns, or rather in the huts that had been constructed amidst the ruins. In fact, the German soldiers seemed in this district to have taken the place of the Belgian population, as between the frontier and Mons I do not remember seeing a single Belgian. Of course, at this time I did not know that thousands of Belgians had fled to England, nor had I heard anything more than vague rumours of German atrocities, such as the burning of Louvain and the indiscriminate murder of the civilian population in many parts of Belgium. I was therefore somewhat at a loss to understand why the railway line was so very much more carefully guarded in Belgium than it was in France, and why the civilian population seemed to have almost disappeared.

As we began to enter the mining district in which the town of Mons is situated, I looked out of my prison window with renewed interest at the more dominant features of the landscape, which I could now recognise quite distinctly.

At one place the line followed for a short time the very road along which we had marched on the 22nd August, the day before the battle of Mons, happy in our ignorance of all that was to come.

It was along this same straight road lined with tall poplar trees that the grey-clad German soldiers had been rushed on in motor-cars, that the hundreds of machine-guns and light artillery had hurried with the hope, that was so nearly realised at Le Cateau, of destroying what was left of the little British army. Further on the line skirts the now famous Canal de Condé.

The effect of the German shell fire was very noticeable along the banks of the canal. Most of the houses within a hundred yards of the water had been totally destroyed, so that the ground between the railway line and the canal was now fairly open. On the right side of the line the damage had not been so considerable; still, even on that side fully fifty per cent of the houses were roofless. As far as a limited view from the railway would allow me to judge, I do not think the upper part of the town was much knocked about. Most of the German shelling on the 23rd had been directed on the British positions along the canal, and any damage that was done in the town itself was probably caused by the British guns' attempt to check the German advance through the town later in the afternoon.

The lower part of the town of Mons reminded me of the streets of Pompeii. The silent ruins had been abandoned even by the German soldiers. Here and there some rough attempt had been made to provide shelter, and we passed a few miserable women and children who were standing grouped in the doorways of their shattered homes. We entered the station of Mons at about 7 P.M. Here, as far as could be seen, everything seemed quite normal, and no traces were visible of the storm that must have raged all around during that eventful August day when British troops had paid their flying visit to the town.

The platform side of the train was quite deserted, so I turned my attention to the other window, and was presently accosted by a German railway soldier. I at once surmised from his opening remark and evil-looking face that he was intent on "prisoner baiting." I naturally pretended not to understand, and he thereupon became most annoyed. The expression of his humorous thought was that "the English were all going to Berlin, and the verdammte English would verdammt well stay there for ever." I shook my head and said "nicht verstehe."

Then followed a sort of pantomime repetition of the same idea slowly spoken in simple words. Again I shook my head. Then a brilliant idea struck him: "Parlez vous Français?" "Oui," said I. But all the French he could muster consisted of "A Berlin." This was yelled out in a loud voice with great enthusiasm.

I then constructed a sentence in very bad German to the effect that our train was not going to Berlin but to Munich. This got rid of him, as he evidently thought it was hopeless to make the thick-headed Engländer understand his subtle German humour, and off he went shouting "A Berlin, A Berlin!"