A Regimental Surgeon Read online

In February came the first parcels of food and clothes from friends in England, and the change in the condition of the men was wonderful; almost incredible. Realising that they had not been forgotten; more from the tonic effect of remembrance than from the food received, though the result of English food was priceless, they recovered their self-respect. Proud, their hunger half-satisfied for one or two days by the English food, they gained new heart and spirit and cared nothing for the German rule. Obedient to regulations, they showed an amazing cheerfulness in captivity. The loud talk of men, now half-fed after months of starvation, echoed through the huts at night. Like the children of Israel in Babylon they had in the past hung their harps on the willows and sat down by strange waters; and some of them had wept. But now their voices were raised in story, argument and song, where before there had been nothing but dumb misery. They did not mind now if the war lasted three years more, provided that we won.

  Two bitter pills the German had to swallow. He could not sow dissension among the Allies and he could no longer break their spirit. Our men would quarrel with the French, would fight with them, would make up rhymes about them, but there was never bad feeling.

  I say, in all earnestness, that, with very few exceptions, all the Germans in the camp were harsh and cruel to our men. More particularly those who had lived, before the war, in England from fifteen to twenty years; had married English women and had families, then and now at liberty in England, and enjoying the free life of the country their men were betraying. They knew all Tommy's tricks and his language, and they used the knowledge, gained in England, to bring these Englishmen to punishment. So lacking in any moral courage were they, that they dared not run the risk of being considered to be pro-English. So they, the more, abused us and were heavy upon us to prove the completeness of their German sympathies.

  The most contemptible trait that Germans show is the lack of moral courage; these signs of moral cowardice. I do not believe there is one man in Germany, of fighting age, who dares to call his soul his own. There is not one whose naturally simple and kindly feelings are not overwhelmed by the official orders to be brutal. Only surreptitiously, when they were certain they were not observed, would they unbend and be their natural selves. One mean hound in particular, the under-commandant of one of the camps, and later, in charge of Stohmuller Camp, was known to have an English wife and six children in England; yet in this camp there were always many of our men tied to stakes all through the winter. Under the guise of assisting our English chaplain, also a prisoner, in his services, this man would sometimes ingratiate himself with some of us; all the time we felt he was trying to make his position in England secure after the war.

  The Prussian military machine is a relentlessly efficient thing; but I am not in agreement with the commonly expressed opinion of my countrymen with regard to it. The Prussian military domination must be broken, but we must in a way respect the authors of this rule. A Prussian may fear God and the Kaiser, but he does not fear anything else; he is not afraid of us or of any of his enemies, and that is why he does not kill prisoners. But the Saxons, the Wiirtemburgers and, especially, the Bavarians, they are the contemptible people in Germany. They are bound to us by many ties, and yet they dare not show any consideration to our men made captives. They fear their prisoners; they fear to have a disarmed man behind them. Most of the killing of prisoners has been done by these people, and we should not forget it. The quality of mercy is only found in brave men. Fear and hate go hand in hand, and savagery attends both. That is why the Bavarian kills his prisoners; he is nervously afraid that the wounded captive behind him may have a bomb concealed. I have many times been thankful that I was taken prisoner by Prussians, by men of a certain age, and not by the young officer who kills to show his equanimity in the face of danger. Often, the worst instances of butchery of stretcher-bearers and other unarmed prisoners may be put to the credit of the young officer of Bavarian, Wurtemburgian or Saxon troops.

  Malingering was always in the official German eye; every prisoner was a malingerer until he died or in other ways proved his illness. The diet in the hospital or convalescent hut was based on this principle. Diarrhoea and dysentery diseases, the recognition of which was much dependent on prisoners' statements, were always treated with suspicion. For the first twenty-four hours rice water only was given; afterwards water with a little rice. When the prisoner in sheer hunger and desperation, declared his recovery, he was sent back to the heaviest fatigue in the bitterest weather. Thus there was much concealment of disease, the worst possible condition for the propagation of epidemics; starving men preferred the horse-bean or potato soup and black bread with dysentery to rice water in hospital and a possible cure.

  When, at last, the expected epidemic of cerebro-spinal-meningitis broke out among our men and the French, our opinions were overridden, and it was officially termed "influenza of the head." When the rash broke out, the dislike to light and the coma developed, the diagnosis was changed— "measles with meningial symptoms" —was the official verdict. From the beginning we urged lumbar puncture to examine the cerebro-spinal fluid. Streng verboten! But verboten or not, one night we did this operation on one of our men and found the tell-tale cloudy fluid, we strained and found the intracellular diplococcus. Then we took the matter up again with the Chef-Arzt. "Disobedience of orders!" he roared. But we were responsible medical men, we urged. Even then he tried to hedge; but the evidence was overwhelming and cases of "meningial measles" still poured in. Then when the worst was done, and the patients had infected all their companions, the huts were wired in, but no sanitary measures instituted beyond that. Now there was at that time only one proved and successful treatment, the injection of Flexner's serum into the spinal canal. But they would not let us have it. There was, we were told, a German preparation, a vaccine, a different thing but quite as good; great and noble Germany did not have to go to America to learn anything. The untried German vaccine failed and the men were doomed to die for the crime of not reacting to official German preparations.

  As could only be expected, the type of soldier employed as a sentry in prison camps was often so afraid of his charges that he fired at them for any and every breach of discipline. If he had the least reason to believe that a prisoner or prisoners were behaving in a suspicious manner he would shoot. One night a poor Frenchman came out of his hut to go to the latrine; challenged very loudly by the sentry, he halted; then becoming frightened, he turned and went back to his hut; but an unteroffizier, then on his rounds, pulled out his revolver and shot the Frenchman dead.

  There were also at Sennelager about 150 Grimsby fishermen; taken with their catches of fish in the early days of the war, they were nevertheless treated as mine-layers. Their heads and beards half shaven they were dressed in parti-coloured clothes, half red, half blue, a kind of convict dress. Brought, after suffering many things to Sennelager, they were treated in all respects as prisoners-of-war, with^the one ^exception that they did not do heavy fatigues. One of them was standing in a queue before the camp kitchen holding out his tin bowl for the midday soup. Whether his smoking of a cigarette was the pretext, or whether the men were not quiet while waiting for their food will not be known. He, however, was standing quite quietly, when the German sentry hit him over the back of the head with the butt end of his rifle. He dropped and was taken to the hospital. Here he developed epileptiform fits, but in spite of that was sent on fatigue to cut wood. When I arrived two months later he was having from ten to fifteen fits a day, and examination of his skull showed a depressed fracture, and that an operation which should have been performed long ago was urgently needed. He was sent away to Paderborn where he disappeared from our knowledge.

  Now, about February, 1915, the first German wounded arrived from England, unfit for further service; they brought stories of good treatment and good food. Their only complaint was that they had no black bread and no German sausage. I asked one of our head doctors one day, in the course of conversation, whether the return of these men
and their report could not be used to ameliorate the condition of our prisoners. "No," he said, "of course the English treated our German prisoners well, they are afraid of the avenging wrath of German Michael if they did otherwise!"

  Among the German recruits who came to be trained at Sennelager was a young battalion of Jaegers, well-behaved and well-educated young men. The Jaeger is proud of his corps and draws the same distinction between it and the ordinary infantry regiment as the Rifle Brigade does in England. After six weeks' training with us they left— just before Christmas—for the front, full of enthusiasm. Six weeks later they were back again, the remains of the battalion; 200 out of 1,100 who had left us. No more songs now! They had been up against the English and had done well; and they brought back with them packets of Woodbine cigarettes that our men in the trenches had presented; one packet for each dead Englishman buried. This occurred in the days of an informal Christmas truce. They were soldiers and good soldiers too; not of the stay-well-behind-the-lines-kind, and they bore no animus against our men.

  The difference between a German regiment that has been to the trenches and one that is in training is very marked. The tried soldier is quiet, he has no inclination to jeer at prisoners, his singing days are over. The recruit, however, sings all the time; on the march he is ordered to sing. One can hear the sergeant-major shouting "Singen Sie." And their songs are of simple, homely subjects as a rule; of home, of peace, of quiet farms, of golden harvests. There are, of course, the more arrogant songs like "Deutschland Über Alles" and the "Wacht am Rhein." But on the whole one cannot fail to be struck with the quality of the verses. German songs are melodious, simple, and speak of noble subjects. The French songs, barring the "Marseillaise," are trifling and often vulgar; but our English songs are futile: American rag-time and the odious "Tipperary." If songs be a test of national character, then the German has this much to his credit.

  The efforts made by the authorities to impress prisoners with the inexhaustible supply of men were childish but amusing. Each day they would march the training battalion by different roads and in different uniforms through the camp; it appeared in full marching order, in light marching order without the helmet, in linen fatigue dress; but it was always the same battalion; and the battalion sang loudly as it passed through the camp. The transport and the machine guns too, came by different roads, but it was the same transport and the same machine guns. We found that out, for the French pasted bits of white paper on the hubs of the wheels. Nor could the Germans understand the reason for the jeering laughter that greeted the exhibition of their well-known wagons. It was all a part of German method; orderly, well-reasoned out. For might it not be that the prisoners would write home of these endless soldiers, and thereby bring their recalcitrant Governments to heel? The censor would see to it that no such reference would be erased from French or English letters.

  Then on March 6, 1915, came orders for me. I was released from prison and taken to Güetersloh, an officers' camp, about twenty miles away.

  CHAPTER VIII

  GÜETERSLOH

  On the outskirts of this little town, lying almost at the foot of the Teutoburger Wald, and chiefly renowned for its beer and sausages, is a half-finished lunatic asylum. There, within a high barbed-wire fence, is an officers' prisoners camp, containing nearly 1,000 officers in all; about 400 Russian, 450 French, 75 Belgians and 60 English. The Russians, contrary to our preconceived idea of their mastery of tongues, do not speak any language but their own as a rule. They are very well built men, but they show melancholy in their faces. To hear Russians talking together is to think that they are on the point of tears. There is sadness in their music. Far and away the most artistic of all our fellow prisoners, they play every instrument of music, sing very well, are devoted to religious exercises, while some of them painted very well indeed. But they were restless under confinement, more easily depressed by bad news and most fertile in expedients for escape.

  The French were depressed also, for the most part, though there were a number of them who were gay and light-hearted. The French territorial officer, with wife and family and an established business, naturally takes confinement badly. The English on the other hand being less complex and less highly organised, bore their captivity very cheerfully. We are truly the most sane nation in Europe. If there was any insanity in connection with our prison camps in Germany, it was to be found among our gaolers, not among ourselves.

  The Belgians were very good friends of ours; were cheerful in a wonderful way, and played our games, and played them very well too. Representatives of all nationalities were mixed together in the separate houses that formed this prison. They agreed very well indeed, on the whole. But the French were at times annoyed that the Russian steam roller, as it was called, should roll backwards! The Russians, for their part, felt quite confident that it was the sacrifice of the Warsaw Army that saved Paris; in moments of irritation they would ask if it were true, as the last three months' reports had said, that the French were still attacking Souchez! There was a feeling of resentment between the Belgians and the French; the former felt that their Gallic neighbours had left them in the lurch, while they were holding up the German advance at Liege. But all this was merely superficial; below the surface lay mutual respect and a determination not to allow the Germans to sow dissension between us.

  Strange as it may seem, the English were the most popular of all nationalities in the camp; not that there was any particular charm about us, but all realised that we, as a country, were fulfilling our share of war; that we, alone of all the Allies, were a plus quality, had lost no territory, had swept the seas and captured German colonies. The English, though numerically small, were the dominant factor in the camp. This was pain and grief to the Germans, and they retaliated by disciplinary measures, inflicted on all prisoners indiscriminately, but intended to hit the English in particular. The English seemed to initiate everything; the games, the tea in the afternoon, the international tea parties that cemented friendships and smoothed away misunderstandings, the regulations for the use of the baths, the physical exercises, the right that every Englishman had to keep his window open at night, regardless of the shivers of his Allies. But the English were all so cheerful and so sane. To be depressed or melancholic was to play into the enemies' hands. In our casual, irresponsible way, we seemed to instil confidence into our fellow prisoners. It was pure selfishness; and in many ways we could understand how abominably offensive we, as a nation, could be in other circumstances. The English never indulged in pointless speculations as to the probable duration of the war. We always maintained that it would be a long war; and that we must make the best of it. Not that we knew for certain whether the war would be short or long. But we did know that the short war was the German war, that all Germany wanted this war to finish, that the German soldiers hated the idea of another winter campaign. Our attitude caused alarm and consternation among the German sentries. "Why so permanent a tennis court is it that you construct; it should for years last? ' was the very frequent question of soldiers and sentries about the German camp. "Oh, that's all right; we shall want it for next winter, the summer following and the winter after that," we would carelessly reply 1 Though they hated us, yet they believed us in their hearts, and a settled gloom filled their faces. If what the hated English said was true, there would be another winter in the trenches. Hans and Fritz had, up till now, successfully dodged the obligation of fighting, and found that the less dangerous task of guarding prisoners amply fulfilled their military aspirations. Oh! dread thought! They would not be able to evade active service much longer. The rheumatism, the loose cartilage in the knee, the weak heart could not be expected indefinitely to deceive the doctors, and their turn would come. For the average German soldier hates war; the last thing in the world he wants to do is to go to the trenches. He was comfortable, married, and his job was good before the war. On every side the universal question to us was as to the probable termination of this dreadful struggle. Not that this p
revented them from making excellent soldiers when they did eventually get to the trenches. Always they questioned us, "How was it that the Allies, after being so decisively beaten, did not seem to realise it?" Not that they thought that official Government reports were wrong; they were always right. Did they not put satisfying postscripts to the disquieting bulletins, such as, "The English report is clearly a lie; and is intended to bolster up the failing courage of our chief enemy. Reference to the official report of German High Headquarters will show how much truth there is in this lying statement?" It was the English, the stiff-necked race that hid behind the sheltering strip of sea, who were the object of their hate; the English merchant who did not fight himself and still carried on his business. Ten thousand devils! how high the prices obtained! How the freights were rising! How rich their fat rival was getting! Sitting in comfort on his English office stool,-while the German merchant, in the trenches or looking after prisoners, nightly contemplated his ruined business. How they hated us! In impotent rage they filled their papers with articles against England, the traitors who fought with Frenchmen and Russians, and kept business going as usual. The English merchant was the chief object of hate; no wonder the submarine was so popular.

  But with all this hatred concentrated upon England, even the Germans showed a certain degree of respect for us in a way. We always obeyed reasonable orders; we were never late for parade. We would get the same punishment as other prisoners, but it was seldom the necessity arose in our case. On one occasion some of the French and Russians came late for parade; they had apparently gone to sleep, and we were all kept waiting for twenty minutes on the sand of the parade ground. The Commandant was angry, and gave vocal expression to his rage; his displeasure was conveyed to the unteroffizier, they in turn visited it upon the prisoners; but even that did not produce the sleeping Russians. Now, the English were always placed in the rear of the other companies, and their inspection took place last of all the prisoners, as if to show them their proper place in the estimation of their gaolers. Cigarettes were lighted by some of us; our Allies, also tired of waiting, copied our example. A perfect crescendo of yells and barks issued from the Commandant; French and Russians were hauled up before him and summarily given three days in prison for daring to smoke on parade. But our treatment was different. The interpreter came down to us saying that the Commandant had asked him whether he thought that the English officers were smoking. "I told him," said the interpreter, "that I was sure that British officers never smoked on parade!'"