Three Times and Out / Told by Private Simmons, Written by Nellie L. McClung

by Mervin C. Simmons; Nellie L. McClung

None of us like the thought of getting out to work in this horrible climate, cold, dark, and rainy, and the roll-call brought out the fact that we had very few able-bodied men. He had a list of our names, and we were called in groups into an office. Bromley and I gave our occupations as "farmers," for we hoped to be sent out to work on a farm and thus have an opportunity of getting away.

Most of the Canadians were "trappers," though I imagine many of them must have gained their experience from mouse-traps. Many of the Englishmen were "boxers" and "acrobats." There were "musicians," "cornetists," and "trombone artists," "piano-tuners," "orchestra leaders," "ventriloquists," "keepers in asylums," "corsetiers," "private secretaries," "masseurs," "agents," "clerks," "judges of the Supreme Court," and a fine big fellow, a Canadian who looked as if he might have been able to dig a little, gave his occupation as a "lion-tamer."

The work which we were wanted to do was to turn over the sod on the peat bogs. It looked as if they were just trying to keep us busy, and every possible means was tried by us to avoid work.

The "lion-tamer" and three of his companions, fine, vigorous young chaps, stayed in bed for about a week, claiming to be sick. They got up for a while every afternoon—to rest. The doctor came three times a week to look us over, but in the intervening days another man, not a doctor, who was very good-natured, attended to us.

One day nine went on "sick parade"; that is, lined up before the medical examiner and were all exempted from work. The next day there were ninety of us numbered among the sick, and we had everything from galloping consumption to ingrowing toe-nails, and were prepared to give full particulars regarding the same. But they were not asked for, for armed guards came in suddenly and we were marched out to work at the point of the bayonet.

Steve Le Blanc, one of the party, who was a splendid actor, spent the morning painfully digging his own grave. He did it so well, and with such faltering movements and so many evidences of early decay, that he almost deceived our own fellows. He looked so drawn and pale that I was not sure but what he was really sick, until it was all over. When he had the grave dug down to the distance of a couple of feet, the guard stopped him and made him fill it in again, which he did, and erected a wooden cross to his own memory, and delivered a touching funeral oration eulogizing the departed.

We all got in early that day, but most of us decided we would not try the "sick parade" again.

This was in the month of January, which is the rainy season, and there was every excuse for the boys' not wanting to work—besides the big reason for not wanting to help the Germans.

One night, when some of our fellows came in from work, cold, wet, and tired, and were about to attack their supper of black bread and soup, the mail came in, and one of the boys from Toronto got a letter from a young lady there who had been out on the Kingston Road to see an Internment Camp. He let me read the letter. She had gone out one beautiful July day, she said, and found the men having their evening meal under the beeches, and they did so enjoy their strawberries and ice-cream; and they had such lovely gardens, she said, and enough vegetables in them to provide for the winter. The conclusion of the letter is where the real sting came: "I am so glad, dear Bert, that you are safe in Germany out of the smoke and roar and dirt of the trenches. It has made me feel so satisfied about you, to see these prisoners. I was worrying a little about you before I saw them. But now I won't worry a bit. I am glad to see prisoners can be so happy. I will just hope you are as well cared for as they are.... Daddy and Mother were simply wild about Germany when they were there two years before the war. They say the German ways are so quaint and the children have such pretty manners, and I am afraid you will be awfully hard to please when you come back, for Daddy and Mother were crazy about German cooking."

I handed the letter back, and Bert and I looked at each other. He rolled his eyes around the crowded room, where five hundred men were herded together. Two smoking stoves, burning their miserable peat, made all the heat there was. The double row of berths lined the walls. Outside, the rain and sleet fell dismally. Bert had a bowl of prison soup before him, and a hunk of bread, black and heavy. He was hungry, wet, tired, and dirty, but all he said was, "Lord! What do they understand?"