Wounded and a Prisoner of War, by an Exchanged Officer

by Malcolm V. Hay

The fat N.C.O. who had been standing in the corridor during this interview now came into the carriage, and I asked him if there was any dinner going, and was told that it would be brought along presently. It was not long before a party of soldiers appeared carrying two dixies of soup, a plateful of which was handed up.

It was thin vegetable soup, tasteless and stone cold. This was the "dinner from a restaurant car" that Dr Schmidt had told me about! My appetite would not rise to more than a spoonful of it, and I do not think even Oliver Twist would have asked for more. Fortunately my kind French friend at Cambrai had provided me with a parcel of food, and I thought the time had come to take stock of its contents. I asked my corpulent attendant to reach me down the parcel, in which I found several "petit pains," some ham, and a large lengthy German sausage, upon which, as it rolled out of the paper, my guardian cast a swift but appreciative eye. I thought it might be a good idea to try and bribe him into a good temper, and ventured to ask for the loan of a knife! My request having been complied with, I sheared off a large piece of the sausage and stuck it on the end of the knife as I handed it back to its owner.

A grateful grunt showed that my offering to the stomach had found a weak spot in the enemy's armour, and from that moment we were comparatively friendly. After I had eaten some bread and ham I asked for something to drink, and was told that nothing was to be had except the thin cold soup. I had saved one or two cheap cigars from the hospital, and I settled down as best I could to smoke one of them.

I have forgotten to mention that there was a Red Cross attendant on the train, whose occupation consisted in slouching in the corridor and staring out of the window. He was a short, thick-set man, one of the dirtiest-looking I have ever seen in uniform. He wore a once white linen overall and a Red Cross badge on his arm. I do not know if he was qualified for Red Cross work, as he made no attempt or offer to help me or any of the other wounded men. Shortly after leaving Mons I began to feel symptoms of a bad headache coming on, and so I asked my guardian if there was a doctor on the train and if he could give me some aspirin. My request was passed on to the Red Cross attendant, who said he would go and ask the doctor.

It was now dark, and the train stopped at many small stations, at each of which numbers of soldiers were billeted. Some of them always came up to my carriage to show off their knowledge of English. One or two of them were very rude, but the majority were merely interested and addressed me quite politely, sometimes in fluent English. One man I remember, who spoke just like an Englishman, said that he had been twelve years in England with a German band and knew all the coast towns. This fellow said he was very sorry "that England had made this War," as no Germans would like to go back there any more.

At several stations other German bandsmen spoke to me out of the darkness, and sometimes they climbed up on to the footboard and attempted to enter into discussions as to who started the War. England, of course, was declared to be the aggressor and originator of all the trouble, and some surprise mingled with hatred was expressed at her action in thus attacking, for no apparent reason, a pacific industrial country like Germany. Of course I was not in a position to argue the point, and generally contented myself with asking whether they thought we had prepared an Expeditionary Force of 70,000 men to attack 7,000,000 Germans.

These men belonged for the most part to the Landsturm, and one of them told me they had been in billets for over two months. They seemed quite cheerful at the prospect of going nearer the firing line.

Conscription is, from the Germans' point of view, simply organised patriotism, although ignorant opponents of National Service are fond of sneering at the German conscript and assert that he will only fight when forced on with revolvers. I wish that some of our stay-at-home sneerers could have seen these crowds of German conscripts and heard the singing and laughter. If cheerfulness be one of the first qualities of a soldier, these people possessed it to a very high degree.

At one station a soldier who was, I think, rather full of beer, hung on to the footboard outside my window and attempted to be offensive in a mixture of German and English. His peroration was coming to an end as the train began to move, but he clung on and delivered his final shaft: "England is the enemy and will be punished." However, his own punishment was near at hand, for when he attempted to jump off the train, which was running fairly fast, he made a false step and fell heavily on the back of his head, and, as it seemed to me, right under the wheels of the train.

My sentry, who under the influence of sausage had become quite communicative, remarked that the man was drunk and deserved all he got.