A Regimental Surgeon Read online

  Always they hated us worse than the other prisoners, always they suspected us of contumacy. Nor were they in those days altogether wrong. As if to threaten us with frightfulness in case we misbehaved, a large notice was displayed all over the camp. In this document was mentioned the fact that German doctors, nurses and prisoners had been very badly treated in England and France. Yet, so great was German Kultur, that reprisals would not be taken on us helpless prisoners, for the actions of our peoples and Governments. But it behoved us to pay strict obedience to our orders or the High German Government would have to reconsider its decision. This was the only entertaining thing in the camp. It was printed in German, French and English and bore Freiherr von Bissing's signature.

  But I soon had to leave my lambs in hospital, for orders arrived that I was to leave, not for Holland, but, alas! for Minden.

  CHAPTER VI

  MINDEN

  At the end of November, 1914, four of us departed together, with a fully armed escort, two bound for Minden and two for Minister. A long weary train journey lay before us, during which we were the cynosure of all eyes; a travelling wild-beast exhibition, if we might judge by the attitude of the people. Two of us on arriving at Minden found that, as usual, we were not known, not wanted, not expected. There is the same orderly confusion in Germany as in England, the only difference being that in Germany no one may criticise. This is infinitely soothing to the authorities and saves a lot of trouble. We slept that night in the hospital with some English soldiers who had been wounded at Mons and Le Cateau. They told us dreadful stories of the first two months in German hospitals. Not all survived their sufferings, but they agreed that things were a little better now. They complained of the roughness of the German surgeons, but they admitted that, in some ways, they were almost as bad to their own men. I heard German soldiers howling with pain when some minor but very painful operations were being done on them at this hospital without an anaesthetic. To the German mind, suffering is a test of nobility of character, and the soldier is expected to be hardened to pain. That pain, especially unnecessary pain, has the opposite effect and destroys one's resistance to painful sensations is an established fact in all the world, but it has not yet penetrated to the German military surgeon. Besides, chloroform is expensive and it takes time to administer it, time that might be spent in walking the fashionable promenades in the smart blue cloak that marks the German officer.

  Our men were very glad to see us, if only for one night, and were sorry to lose us in the morning. The next day we were sent off in a cab at our own expense; fourteen marks, I remember. But why should not a prisoner be made to pay? He should be thankful to be alive! This is ever their attitude. A drive of three or four miles, with an armed escort, brought us to our prison camp, situated, as our gaolers told us, on the site of the battle of Minden, where we once fought with the great Frederick against the French.

  Minden is a camp containing 15,000 prisoners; French and Belgian, and a few convalescent English soldiers. Also there were here confined a number of English civilians. These civilians were schoolmasters, teachers, clerks, and men from specialised British industries; they were treated like dogs, or perhaps, more strictly speaking, like English soldiers, prisoners of war. This is a flagrant breach of international agreement. They slept with coloured French soldiers, were covered with lice, had no means of bathing, but were extraordinarily cheerful under it all. I must not forget some Kroo boys from the Gold Coast, who gloried in their British nationality. These unfortunates had been taken off British ships in German harbours.

  The camp was divided into two. Long wooden huts in rows and between them roads dominated by an ostentatious display of out-of-date field guns. The prisoners were crowded together regardless of sanitary or hygienic regulations, their food was abominable and insufficient; of clothing they had nothing but that in which they stood. We two medical officers lived in a small room at the end of the hospital hut. It was fairly comfortable when we had once pasted paper all over the cracks in the thin matchboarding of which the huts were constructed. There was usually coal for the stove. We could make tea ourselves, but our midday meal was brought to us by an orderly. In a little room opposite were two Russian doctors, both very charming fellows. The pretext under which our detention here was justified was that thousands upon thousands of English and Russian prisoners captured in recent victories were shortly coming to Minden-For ten days we had no work to do, then we were assigned work under supervision. This consisted of attending to the morning sick, both French and Belgians. We were not allowed to treat or speak to our own wounded, for an English doctor might be capable of inducing riot or disturbance! Here we had an unequalled opportunity of treating lice-itch, and all the other diseases that follow in the train of filth and the disregard of sanitary precautions, One morning buying provisions in the canteen, I was approached by a German unteroffizier, the Assistant Inspector of one of the laagers, a bloated and truculent person. Good morning! had I seen the latest order of Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria? No more English prisoners to be taken alive! Quarter only to be given to the volunteers like the London Scottish. Did I not agree that it was an excellent order? What other fate could the English mercenaries expect? Was not the regular Army recruited from the workhouses and the gaols? Yes! he had lived fourteen years in England, between Bristol and Bath; knew every part of England, used to play football at one time. Ha! the great Tirpitz, how superior to the bungling amateur, Winston Churchill. Soon the noble German Navy would blow us from the sea.

  I listened, unwilling to stop the words that condemned this swine out of his own mouth. For he had been guilty of gross treachery to the country that had given him a living; he and countless others I met in Germany had eaten our bread and salt for from ten to twenty-five years. This one crime alone is sufficient to put these people beyond the pale of our hospitality in the future. Among our prisoners was one, a private in the Royal Fusiliers. He had a compound fracture of the humerus, and the arm had been set in an improper way. Vicious union had taken place and, twice, it had to be broken again. Each morning he would go to the German doctor. I heard the stifled English shouts and walked out to meet him, He was pale and sweaty. "What have they been doing to you?" I asked "They've been a progging of my arm again," he complained. Now there were two large unhealed wounds in the arm, and it was clear there was dead bone inside. Daily probing is a most unsurgical procedure; it can tell one nothing one did not know before; it is exquisitely painful and introduces fresh organisms into the wound.

  "What do they tell you?" I asked. "They tell me to go outside and sing ' God save the King.'" Thus did the German doctor carry on his little bit of war behind the lines.

  Suddenly one morning we were hastily summoned to the Kommandatur, and ordered to prepare, immediately, for a journey to Sennelager near Paderborn.

  CHAPTER VII

  SENNELAGER BEI PADERBORN

  On a dirty, wet day, December 15, 1914, we arrived at Sennelager. A big prisoners' camp with a large military training camp was established there. The awkward recruits from the farms and towns of Westphalia were here collected and licked into shape. There were advantages in the combination of camp and barrack; on the one hand, the sight and presence of so many troops intimidated the prisoners; on the other the daily exhibition of the captives that spelt their fellow soldiers' prowess, on the Western front, encouraged the young idea. The whole was under the command of General Roodewald. He was lame, halt, blind of one eye, and frequently a lunatic. But he was a veteran of the war of '70. He hated the English with the impotent fury of the old man, who, though himself far too old to go to the trenches, never tires of declaiming upon the privilege the young soldier has in going to the trenches in Flanders to shed his blood for the glory of the Fatherland. Now the young recruit in these days had lost quite a bit of his enthusiasm, as the weeks drew closer and his class would be soon called up. Early in the war, when he thought everything would be over in a few months, and before his own class could be possibly c
alled up, the young German had the courage of seven lions. But after his course of training he found that the idea of shedding his blood for the glory of the Fatherland, in the cold, damp trenches of Flanders, had ceased to attract him. Therefore the "blood and fury" speeches of the General on his departure for the accursed "Krieg" left the young soldier cold.

  I saw none of the savage brutality to recruits of which I had so often heard, in my view of the German barracks system. Infinitely patient, they took their little squads of wide-eyed raw recruits; never more than six men at a time for the first few days. They taught them to move their wrists, how to bend the knee, how nature intended the ankle joint to work. We saw it all and very good it was. Later, in platoons of half-companies, they would be out, on the moors or in the barrack squares, learning squad drill, morning, noon and night. Sham fights in the darkness, machine - gun courses; steadily, remorselessly it went on. They lived in the big barrack in which four of us medical officers had a room, and very civil and quiet and well-behaved they were. There were no remarks as we passed them on the stairs, politely making way for us. Often it made us wonder what there could be in the Prussian machine that made these simple boys the savages they became.

  Our first impressions of Sennelager were most depressing. We saw it, walking from the Kommandantur, where we were searched, and there I lost all my medical notes. In vain I protested against the loss of notes made on 1,300 English, French, German, Belgian wounded, that I personally had seen. They contained, I was most gravely informed, evidence of the most damning nature of the use of dum-dum bullets by the English. Nor did I ever see the records of my work again. But what were these dejected beings we met along the road inside the camp? Tall, lean, hungry men in ragged khaki tunics with wisps of thin cotton shirts peeping from the rents in the ragged trousers; with blue hands and red noses, and white, waxy cheeks; wistful eyes; hair long and unkempt, the beards of months upon their chins; hatless, save for skull caps made from the lining of khaki pockets. They wore no boots, but large wooden sabots, full of straw, water and the snow that covered the ground. Wearily they dragged one clumsy sabot after another. What breed of vagabond was this that masqueraded in torn and ragged but still unmistakably British khaki? "Who are you?" I said to a small group that were hanging round the canteen: the room that German soldiers used for meals and beer and songs. "First Life Guards, sir!" "And you?" "First Battalion Gordon Highlanders!" "And you?" "Third Grenadier Guards, sir!" What hell was this that turned such men into these scarecrows? Hopeless, helpless, friendless; most of them wounded, all of them starving, every man lousy; many dragging crippled limbs behind them on sticks or home-made crutches. They lived in wooden huts—long low buildings with a stove at each end; lying on the floor on straw palliasses that were alive with vermin. Two hundred to a room that should have held forty. Moisture dripped from the roofs all day and night, upon the palliasses and the blankets that covered the floor. They were officially called blankets, but they were made of flannelette, one very thin, the other not so thin, and both unspeakable. Strings stretched across the room bore the garments that had been their shirts. The huts were full of the smell of frowsty humanity. Their dining-table the floor, a bowl and spoon their only tableware; for forks and knives were forbidden lest they should attack their gaolers. The bowl did duty for food and for washing as well. The only water supply for washing a stream that wandered through the camp. This brook contained sewage and filth, but all day long they washed their clothes to kill the lice. Naturally inclined to be clean, there were some of our men who stripped and washed in the stream every morning through that bitter Westphalian winter. The regulation greyback woollen shirt had long ago succumbed to the frequent washings, and had been replaced by a thin cotton shirt; some even had no shirt at all. They had no drawers, no undervests, no socks; bits of putties and rags were wrapped around their feet. The non-commissioned officers were better off. They had slightly more food; they had small messes to themselves; they did not have to go on fatigue, and they could keep their clothes and boots and greatcoats. But they were not allowed to have any executive authority. N.C.O.'s of other nationalities, French and Belgian, were allowed some degree of control over their men: but the English were suspect; they might have raised rebellion in the camp.

  There were only 300 overcoats. When we protested we were told that some sold their coats. "What did they sell them for?" we asked. "Bread, and in some cases cigarettes," was the reply.

  Food was given out at 6 a.m., 12 o'clock midday, and 6 p.m. At 6 a.m. a bowl of artificial coffee; it was black and hot, and it smelt; but it was food. Being made from burnt barley or maize, it was certainly devoid of caffeine; there was no danger from it of over-indulgence in stimulants. With this was eaten part of yesterday's ration of bread. At 12 midday came soup, usually of potatoes, cabbage or swedes, sometimes thickened with a little barley. At times shreds of meat were visible. There is no doubt that some meat was put into the big soup cauldrons, but the English were farthest from the kitchen, and the starving French and Belgians had first go at it. It was every man for himself in that camp. Once a week porridge, once a fortnight "roll-mops," half a pickled herring with a little cucumber; two half-herrings to three men. Very occasionally we had fish soup made from salted herring or cod; dreadful days these, for the smell alone would drive the men away. Once a week a little cheese. Often horse beans in hot water formed the bill of fare. Daily the ration of bread, 3 ounces each—we measured it— eight men to one half-quartered loaf of black bread. Bread was made of rye, wheat and potato flour, always sour, but always greedily devoured by all our men. It was for this bread that they had sold their greatcoats when any had been sold. Supper varied little from the midday meal. Men on fatigue got one inch of sausage and one extra piece of bread, but their dinner was then postponed until three o'clock in the afternoon.

  Fatigue consisted of pushing and pulling large wagons that went to the station to fetch supplies; but this was a privilege usually kept for the French. Most of our men were told off for six hours' work daily, road making on the moors in snow and water. But many liked the fatigues, for they were in the open air and vastly preferred anything to the smelly camp.

  The punishment was of two kinds; solitary confinement in cells on bread and water, and tying to a post. The first for such a crime as hesitation to obey the order of a French N.C.O. and any lapse from camp discipline. The second was reserved for minor crimes such as theft of food, an odd potato stolen at mealtime, for instance, or falsification of returns. This latter was a fearful crime, and was committed by the men who returned the number of their mess as 10 whereas it was really 9; one having gone to hospital. The others would have a gargantuan feast, an extra one-tenth share each of bread or horse-bean soup. From two hours up to five hours at a time they were lashed to posts in the camp, their hands tied behind them, their arms encircling the posts that supported the barbed wire. The Westphalian winter was bitterly cold and our men had, in the majority of cases, no underclothes or boots. When they were cut down they were frozen; collapsed from exhaustion and had to be taken to the hut that by courtesy was called the hospital.

  There were three separate camps at Sennelager, each holding about 4,000 prisoners, for there were about 10,000 French and Belgian in addition to our men. Each camp was ringed with double barbed wire fences, 14 feet high, enclosing an electric high power wire fence. Fortunately none of the prisoners suffered from this electrical device, the two chief casualties being the General's dog and a German sentry—a simple countryman who touched the wire with his ringer to see if it would work. It did. We were accused by some mysterious process of reasoning of responsibility for his death.

  The system of not employing our own N.C.O.'s and giving authority to French N.C.O.'s frequently gave rise to friction. There was no doubt in our minds that the authorities tried to sow dissension between the Allies. One of our men, after a wakeful night spent in scratching, had been awakened in the morning by a kick from the French lance-corporal. Now our men do
not invite attentions of this kind from any N.C.O., not even a Frenchman. So our man rose and beat the disturber of his dreams. He was tried for his life for the crime of striking a senior officer who was deputed with authority by the German High Command, and was doing his sentence of seven months' hard labour when I left. Many of the men were tempted, by offers of food and pay of a few pfennig a day, to go to work on the farms, in factories and in mines. They had, in fact, no option, for the invitation to volunteer for such work amounted to a practical threat. The French were tractable prisoners; the gentlemen, of whom there were many in the camp as private soldiers, were delightful and charming and very kind to our men. The rest of the French prisoners made the best of a bad job. The General himself would stop on the road and speak to a crippled Frenchman— "Misguided man," he would say, "I'm sorry for you. You've given your money to Russia and your men to England, now you've lost both."