At 10.30, in answer to a great shouting of "Promenade, Promenade" from room to room, those who wished to go for a walk in the "garden" assembled together at the end of the corridor. The garden entrance was at the far end of the courtyard, and in spite of the moat and the triple lines of battlement, the promenading party always crossed the court under escort. It took me about five minutes to cross the yard. Irvine and Reddy always stayed behind to help me along. We were never allowed to start without an extra guard, sometimes two or three, but generally one soldier, rifle loaded and bayonet fixed. Our sentry must have felt, and certainly looked, extremely ridiculous escorting a cripple at the rate of seventy yards in five minutes. What we used to call the garden, Baedeker briefly refers to as follows: "Visitors are admitted to the terrace (view of town) on application to the sentry (fee)." The terrace extended about a hundred yards in length between the barrack buildings and the moat. The total breadth is not more than about fifteen feet. Most of the space is taken up with flowerless flower-beds, extending the whole length of the terrace, with a double row of vines. A narrow pathway about four feet broad was all the space available for exercise. Doubtless the view from the terrace is very fine, and perhaps worth a "fee to sentry," but we were very tired of it. On the right, across the valley at the highest point of the wooded hill, stands the Frankenwarte—a hideously ugly watch-tower; lower down, about half-way to the river, the "Kapelle," a pilgrimage chapel, looked after by religious, whom we could sometimes see walking about their garden, black dots on the far hillside. The Ludwigsbrücke crosses the Main far away below, and twice a week at the same hour we used to watch a regiment of infantry cross the bridge, and the strains of the "Wacht am Rhein" could faintly reach our ears when the wind was favourable. A group of factories form an ugly background to the whole picture, but we found in them a cause for rejoicing, the tall smokeless chimneys bearing witness to the stoppage of work and to the power of Britain's fleet. Three sentries were always on guard during our daily walk, one at each end of the garden and one in the middle, although the only means of exit was to drop down a precipice. The wall on the moat-side bore an interesting inscription to the memory of four French soldiers who had fallen at the spot when the castle was stormed in 1796.[2] A number of cannon-balls, half embedded high up in the masonry of the barrack buildings, testify to the inefficiency of artillery in the days when our great-grandfathers were at war. There was one feature about our terrace promenade which attracted more attention from the promenaders than the view over the town or the fresh air from the hills. I cannot give a fair picture of the Festung without referring to it and to some unpleasant details which the fastidious reader may like to skip. In the very centre of the terrace, hard up against the path, is a large cesspool covered over with two very badly fitting iron lids. The sanitary arrangements for the whole fortress—that is to say, prisoners and guard—are contained in a wooden shed, which stands in the centre of the courtyard just opposite the windows of our corridor. Alongside this shed is another cesspool, fortunately properly closed in. This cesspool is emptied once a week or once a fortnight into an open cart, which then proceeds to our garden to be emptied. This process goes on the whole morning. On this day it is impossible to keep the windows open in the corridor, and a visit to the terrace is, of course, out of the question. Even on the next day the air is most unpleasant, and if there is any rain the cesspool in the garden overflows, and the narrow path is turned into a stream of sewage.
As the castle clock strikes eleven, the terrace party are marched back across the courtyard by a strong guard, and I follow slowly in rear, with a sentry all to myself, dodging manure-heaps and tacking to avoid pools of dirty water and tracts of nameless mud, so that my snail-like progress causes no little worry to the attentive sentry. I spoke to the doctor one day of the absurdity of not allowing me to crawl across the yard without a soldier with bayonet fixed, but the doctor rather had the better of me, for, said he, "The sentry is not provided as an escort, but as a guard of honour!"
Opposite the old doorway entrance leading up to our cold corridor there is another door with a stair leading up to some rooms which are occupied by the permanent staff of the fortress, perhaps by the men who, in times of peace, collected fees from visitors to the castle. In the morning, on our way out, the window above the doorway was always filled with three smiling baby faces, and on a fine day two of the children always took their stand outside the door. Francie was the name of the eldest little girl. She was not more than eight years old; she wore a neat little blue frock; her hair was of beautiful fairness. She was a great friend of Reddy, and always answered his "Guten Morgen, Francie," with smiling shyness. The fat baby, not very clean, with tousled, flaxen curls, could only just walk, and held nervously on to his sister's little finger. Francie at first was very frightened at my appearance, hobbling along on crutches, and the poor little baby fell right over and began to howl right lustily. But Francie soon got to know me nearly as well as Reddy, and her pretty smile was the brightest thing in the whole of Festung Marienberg.
The midday meal was at 12.30. Brown bread, ground-nut butter, and Gruyère cheese were extras that could be ordered at every meal; and the French orderly, when he came in to lay the table, was greeted with cries from all in the room, each officer shouting out for what he required. "20 pf. de beurre" brought a small pat of quite edible butter, 25 pf. was the price of a fairly large-sized helping of brown bread, and 10 pf. for a thin slice of cheese. Cheese and butter were expensive items, as by the time all the thumb-marks had been scraped off, the ration was much reduced in size. The soup was doled out in the kitchen, which, I have forgotten to mention, was at the end of the corridor and the door guarded by a sentry. The loaded soup plates were brought in on a large tray carried by two orderlies. The plates were generally full to the brim, and the orderly would seize one plate in each hand, planting a large and very black thumb right into the swirling soup. Waves of soup then splashed on to the floor or disappeared up a dirty sleeve. I never ate soup while at Würzburg, and even now seldom do so without thinking of the black thumb. The next and final course came in on the trays as before, and was served on oblong plates divided up into four square compartments—meat in one corner, potatoes in the second, and sauerkraut in the third, the fourth being left to eat out of. A knife and fork was provided for each officer, who had, however, to buy his own glass; and in our room, by very special favour, we had been allowed to buy a coloured cotton table-cloth. It was very seldom that any satisfaction could be got out of the meat course, which was almost always pork in some shape or form, and the mainstay of every repast was provided from our private stores of cream, cheese, honey, and brown bread. Supper was, as I have said, merely a slice of cold ham or a sausage and potatoes. The "Gehaltsabrechnung" for this not very luxurious fare was 31 m. 70 pf. per month. Officers of the rank of lieutenant were paid 60 m. a month, from which a deduction was made for board.
We were allowed to see two German papers—the 'Kölnische Zeitung' and the 'Lokal Würzburger Anzeiger.' These papers arrived after lunch, and anything of interest was translated aloud for the benefit of the club by Reddy, who knew German thoroughly. The former showed a disposition to break forth into sensational headlines, and was rabidly and sometimes comically anti-English. On the occasion of the Heligoland fight, one paper announced in large print that the British battle-cruiser Lion had been sunk. In next day's paper we discovered, hidden away in a corner, the statement that the Lion, crippled beyond repair, had been towed into port, and that the Blücher, owing to an accident in the engine-room, had unfortunately sunk on her way back to harbour. News from the British front was not often given much space, and it was easy to guess that at the time there was nothing much doing in that direction. The news from Soissons was naturally made the most of, and was very disheartening reading.
I remember how amused we were at the account of a coal strike in Yorkshire. This, we were all convinced, was an ingenious German lie. Much as we used to long to see English newspapers, I am now thankful that we were not allowed to see them, and that my fellow-prisoners are still confined to sceptical reading of the 'Kölnische Zeitung' and can enjoy undisturbed their own imaginary picture of Britain at war, which a knowledge of the truth would quickly dispel. The long dull days of life at the Festung Marienberg recall a memory of much yearning for news of England, of speculation as to the date of our liberation, and above all, of an intense desire to witness some day the defeat and humiliation of our insolent enemy. But the misery of inactivity when so much is needed to be done, the monotony, the aimless futility of existence that is no longer useful, this is the real trial which makes imprisonment intolerable. There are few prisoners in the Festung Marienberg who would not joyfully exchange their lot for that of a Welsh miner, and work till they dropped for enough bread to keep body and soul together. The mental sufferings of those who are imprisoned in Germany is intensified by the fear that others who have not learnt the truth from bitter experience will not believe. We, in the fortress, knew the power of Germany—could feel it in every incident of our lives. We lived in the very midst of an organisation which moves as one for one purpose—the destruction of European civilisation and the substitution of Teutonic conceptions. The truth which years before had sounded incredible, when voiced by the authority of Lord Roberts, and had been dismissed by the majority of the nation as the senile vapourings of a decrepit Jingo, this truth was now as familiar to us in the Festung as the air we breathed.
What if the nation still fails to understand? If a message could come from our imprisoned countrymen in Germany, from our long-suffering allies in Belgium, whose integrity we guaranteed by a solemn promise which we made no arrangements to keep, from all who know by hard experience how Germany treats those whom she has conquered, such a message would declare that no sacrifice can be too great provided the military domination of Prussia is finally destroyed. Those who have felt the power of the enemy know also that if we are to be successful nothing less than the maximum effort is demanded. What this means Britain as yet does not begin to understand.
IV.
EXTRACTS FROM MY DIARY, EXPANDED AND EXPLAINED.
"Sunday, Jan. 10th.—Mass, 8.30. Snowed a little."
M. l'Abbé officiated. Very nearly all the French officers attended Mass. From my room two were either too ill or too lazy, and Granny, who, in the early hours of the morning, was frightened of catching cold, did not appear outside the bedclothes. The officer who used to read at night, at whom boots were thrown every evening on the stroke of ten, declared himself to be a Pagan, and so he also remained in bed. The choir loft of the chapel had been set aside for the use of the prisoners, and thither we were escorted down a dark stair and long corridor by the usual armed sentries, one of whom remained with us in the church. The body of the church was filled with German soldiers. During Mass the organ was played and hymns were sung by the German part of the congregation. After Mass was Benediction, when it was our privilege to sing. Colonel Lepeltier, with a very powerful voice, acted as leader of the choir, the Frenchmen singing with great entrain, as if to let the enemy know they were not downhearted. On this Sunday M. l'Abbé preached a short sermon on the gospel of the day, but this privilege, no doubt displeasing to the lower part of the congregation, was afterwards withdrawn, and on the following Sundays we had to endure a discourse from a German priest.