Wounded and a Prisoner of War, by an Exchanged Officer

by Malcolm V. Hay

Hardly had we drawn up at the station when it became obvious that our destination had been reached.

A number of Red Cross officials were on the platform, which was lined with stretchers. There was no time for more than a hurried farewell, but before leaving the carriage the young Irishman, whose name was Patrick Flynn, begged me to accept the only thing he had to give me as a souvenir, and pressed into my hand a Belgian five-centime nickel coin, which I shall always keep in remembrance of the unselfish kindness with which these poor wounded soldiers treated me on our long and painful journey.

Festung Marienberg.

CHAPTER VII.
WÜRZBURG.

"Turbatus est a furore oculus meus; inveteravi inter omnes inimicos meus."—Psalm vi. 8.

On our arrival at Würzburg, before leaving the railway carriage, all the soldiers except myself were handed a slip of coloured paper marked "Hütte Barracken No. 14." A most unpleasant-looking person, who spoke a little English, and wore a very superior air, was in command of the stretcher-party that carried me across the station. I kept asking for my luggage, a hand-bag and a fragment of the German sausage which had been left in the carriage, and was told it would follow later, and meantime was, like myself, safe in good German hands. However, my valuable belongings were eventually put on the stretcher beside me. While waiting on the platform my English-speaking attendant volunteered the information that there were already over 200 British officers in the place. This was lying for lying's sake, or perhaps it was a lie told to the wrong person, and should have been reserved for the citizens of Würzburg. The morning was a bitterly cold one, and the arrangements made for our transport from the station gave us the full benefit of the freezing north-easterly wind. The vehicle into which the stretchers were lifted does not deserve the name of ambulance, nor had it any pretension to the title, for it was not even honoured with a Red Cross. It was just a common lorry, such as is used in the district for carting wood, covered with a tarpaulin supported by a longitudinal bar on transverse stays. The tarpaulin, which had been rolled up on one side while the stretchers were being placed in position, was rolled down again. A German ambulance man jumped up behind and off we went. Each stretcher was provided with a blanket, which afforded some small protection from the cold blast which blew through the open end of the cart. None of the soldiers with whom I had travelled from France were in this cart, and at first I thought that all the occupants were Frenchmen. But the man next me was an Englishman, dressed in French uniform, who had been with me in hospital at Cambrai. His face was so drawn and haggard that I had some difficulty in recognising him. This poor fellow would not answer me at first, and then whispered that he did not want the German Red Cross attendant to know that he was an Englishman, and hoped to pass for a Frenchman as long as possible, so as to get better treatment. The other Frenchmen lay silent and motionless, worn out with exhaustion and want of food. By slightly rising on my side, I could see following far behind us a long string of carts similar to our own. The wind, which was now chasing here and there some few fine drifting snow-flakes, had doubtless kept the streets clear of pedestrians, and there were few spectators of the dolorous procession. Some small boys fell in behind, and played at soldiers escorting a convoy, marching in step and singing in tune, only to be chased away presently by a watchful policeman. We crossed a stone bridge over the Main and almost immediately turned in, on our left, through the high wooden palisade which surrounded the hospital huts—our temporary destination.

The tarpaulin was quickly rolled up, and my four companions lifted down on their stretchers and taken away. My stretcher was lifted on to the ground, and remained there for five or ten minutes, close to a group of officers, one of whom appeared very annoyed at my having been brought to the wrong place; he presently came up and politely asked me my name and rank in very good English. This, I afterwards discovered, was Dr Zinck. He told me that I was to be sent up to the fortress. I was helped off the stretcher, and, owing to the cold, had great difficulty in hobbling along, and was very relieved to find that I was to drive up to the castle in a comfortable motor coupé, probably the one used by the doctor himself. A hospital orderly got up beside the driver, and a very tall sentry, who had great difficulty in getting in his rifle with the bayonet fixed, squeezed in beside me.

The Festung Marienberg, about a mile outside the city of Würzburg, is a place of great architectural and historic interest. Previous to the days of heavy artillery, the hill on which the fortress is built provided a naturally impregnable site, which had been used for defensive purposes from the earliest times of which any historic trace has been recorded. When St Kilian in the seventh century brought Christianity to Franconia from far Iona, he was at first very successful at the "Castellum Virtebuch," and converted the Frankish commander. A few years later a chapel was built within the walls, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the fortress became known as Festung Marienberg.

In the middle ages the castle was famous as a stronghold of the warrior bishops of Würzburg, and stood firm during the revolutionary periods which followed on the teachings of Huss and Luther, even when the surrounding country had been laid waste, and the town of Würzburg captured by a rebel army. Once after the peasant army had been betrayed, surrounded, and almost annihilated, the unfortunate survivors were taken away to the Festung Marienberg. "Thirty-six of them," says a contemporary writer, "had their heads cut off, and the council and aldermen have been taken prisoners; God only knows what will be done with them." It was a common punishment in those days for a prisoner to have his eyes gouged out, or his fingers chopped off. At the present time these somewhat barbaric customs have been considerably modified, and although the Rittmeister who was in command of the fortress during my residence there did not resort to such extreme measures in dealing with his prisoners as had been found necessary in the sixteenth century by the Margrave of Brandenburg, he did his best, as I was soon to find out, to make us feel the burden of captivity.