by Alec Waugh
It presented itself innocuously in a paper bag covered with directions in German. It looked dry and unappetising. None of us knew how it should be treated, but the consensus of opinion decided that half an hour’s boiling was required. Adhering to the popular idea, we emptied the packet into a saucepan full of water, boiled it for half an hour, then ate it. The taste was not unpleasant.
Within half an hour, however, we knew that something was wrong. All of us began to move uncomfortably. Pain spread itself across our stomachs: then, too late, appeared one, who could translate the instructions on the wrapper. The contents should have been left to stand in water for at least twenty-four hours, by which time it would have absorbed all the moisture demanded by its composition. We had given it only half an hour’s boiling. It took its revenge by swelling silently within us.
It was a terrible night.
§
The psychology of semi-starvation would make an interesting study. The need for food displaces every need. ‘When the mind’s free the body’s delicate.’ One thought of food all day; dreamt of it all night. There is an exact parable between the prisoner’s attitude to hunger and the Puritan’s sex. While the more honest prisoners admitted quite frankly that they were hungry and sat evening after evening, talking about the day when parcels would arrive from England, planning the meals they would order next time they were in Piccadilly, remembering the banquets of their last leave; the highbrow went to the other extreme, asserting that food was unimportant, that the pleasures of the flesh were petty in comparison with the pleasures of the mind, display the liveliest scorn for those who considered their material appetites. I was of the highbrow section. I flayed the need in me by disparaging it. But I thought of food no less incessantly than the others. It became an obsession as any suppressed instinct does. The insidious germ worked its way into the most unlikely places.
One occasion comes back vividly. I was reading La Débacle and had reached the scene where Louis Napoleon is sitting alone in his room, while his servants lay before him dish after dish which he leaves untouched. Because of my perpetual hungriness the whole effect of the incident was spoilt. I could not enter into the mood necessary to appreciate the effect Zola had aimed at. All I could think was, “Here is this appalling ass Louis Napoleon, surrounded with meats and fish, entrées and omelettes, and the fool does not eat them. If only they had given me a chance!”
One morning I found Milton Hayes sitting on a seat, dipping into three books in turn: Lorna Doone, Pickwick Papers, and The Man of Property.
“A strange selection,” I said.
“No,” he said, “they are all the same. They’ve all done the same thing; they’ve sold; they’ve got the same bedrock principle somewhere. I think I’ve found it.”
“What is it?”
“Gratification of appetite. All these accounts of big meals and luxury. That’s what gets over. People don’t want psychology. But they’ll smack their lips over the saddle of mutton at Swithin Forsyte’s. Then look at the venison pasties in Lorna Doone, the heavy dinners in Pickwick. That’s what people want. They have not got these things; but they want to be told they exist somewhere: that they are to be found. If ever you want to write a book that will really sell, remember that: gratification of appetite: make their mouths water.”
§
It was not till the third month of captivity that parcels of food from England arrived with any regularity. When they did arrive life assumed the routine that it could be expected to maintain till the war ended or we were interned in Holland. The framework of our day was simple. At eight o’clock in the morning breakfast, consisting of coffee, was brought to the rooms. At half-past nine there was a roll-call. At twelve midday there was lunch in the mess-rooms; at three in the afternoon coffee was brought round to the rooms; at six there was supper in the mess-rooms. At nine the doors of the block were closed; at nine-thirty there was an evening roll-call; at eleven lights went out.
The setting for this routine was appropriate.
The entrance of the Citadel Mainz was calculated to inspire the most profound gloom. On our arrival an enormous gate swung open, revealing a black and cavernous passage. As soon as we were herded in, the gate was shut behind us. We were immersed in darkness. Then another gate at the end of the passage creaked on unoiled hinges, ushering us into our new home. That cobwebbed passage was like the neutral space between two worlds. It laid emphasis on captivity.
Under the lens of the camera the entourage of the citadel presents a pleasant aspect. The square looks bright and large, the rooms light and airy; from the top windows there is a delightful view of the Mainz steeples and the Rhineland hills; a fleeting glimpse can be caught of Heine’s bridge. But to the jaundiced eye of the prisoner this comeliness was illusion. In actual circumference the square measured about 400 yards, and was full of the ghosts of squad drill. On most of the walls were painted the head and shoulders of dummy targets that a regiment of snipers had once used for rifle practice. The spirit of militarism was strong; and however delightful the Rhine may look when photographed from the top-story window of a tall block, it is less arcadian when viewed through a screen of wire netting. The whole place was littered with sentries, and barbed wire. For not one moment could one imagine one was free. At times a kind of claustrophobia would envelop one. The tall avenue of chestnuts was like a row of marshalled sentinels.
Some of the rooms were, it is true, light and sunny. But the rooms in the block to which I was allotted were miserably dark. The windows were on a level with the ground on account of a moat that ran round the building. A line of chestnuts shut out the sunlight. The rooms were long and narrow, with bars across the windows. At the end it was very often too dark to read; the windowsill was the only place that provided enough light for a morning shave. From the outside and from the inside the block was like a dungeon. Official photographs omitted it.
There was no chance of our forgetting that we were prisoners. But of our captors I saw extremely little. They never worried us unless we worried them. There was no tyrannical treatment. In the average camp, and ours was an average camp, the Red Cross parcels that were sent to us from England invariably arrived intact. Such annoyances as were caused were the result of such Red Tape officialdom as the Germans applied to themselves. An enormous amount of trouble was caused by the regulations that not only every parcel, but the contents of every package, must be opened in the presence of a German sentry. The Red Cross authorities had given their promise that compasses, poison and revolvers would not be concealed within the apparent innocence of a tin of Maconochie’s beef dripping. But the order had been issued from Berlin that every parcel must be examined.
For the sentries it must have been an exasperating task. Germany was starving. The eyes of the sentries would glisten as they saw inside tin after tin the necessities of which they had been for so long deprived. It was pathetic to see them sweeping up from the table afterwards into bags to take home to their families, the flakes of rice, sugar and oatmeal that had fallen at the opening of the packages.
The opening of the parcels was a small annoyance, however, compared with their treatment of books. Not only had the cover to be stripped off every book, but every written or printed article that came into the camp was subjected to the most rigid censorship. Letters had to be fumigated first, each page had to be carefully censored, and stamped with a large messy circle usually over the least legible portion of the correspondence. Every novel had to be read from beginning to end.
Numerous were the regulations. Any uncomplimentary reference to Germany was taboo; the mere mention of the word Hun or Boche was the signal for confiscation. I once tried hard to rescue a book that since has become one of my most read volumes: Ford Madox Hueffer’s Heaven. I pointed out to the censor that the author was a man of literary integrity; that nothing he could write could be looked upon as dangerous.
“Ah, but it is all full of Huns and Boche,” the censor expostulated.
“Can’t you
tear those pages out?” I said.
“There would be then no pages left.” Against this assertion argument was impossible. “And you see,” he went on, “we are not Huns.”
“No?” I said.
“No, Attila died in A.D. 453. After that there were no Huns. You have no right to call us Huns. That is your Northcliffe-Press; your hate campaign. We are men the same as you.”
It was useless to point out that the average soldier applied the nickname “Hun” or “Boche” or “Jerry” in very much the same way as the Scots were nicknamed “Jocks” and the Frenchmen “Froggies.”
The censor would not see it. “You think we are all barbarians,” he maintained. “It is your hate campaign. We are not Huns; Attila died in A.D. 453. After that there were no Huns.”
Considering the way in which the Kaiser has compared himself to Attila, our warders were peculiarly sensitive on this point. They always approached it with that strange Teuton seriousness that is forever hanging over the crags of the ridiculous.
At Karlsruhe, on the preceding Christmas, a certain officer, who had spent most of the afternoon beside a bottle, in the middle of a camp concert arrogated to himself the right to play a leading part. Leaping on the stage he regaled the audience for the space of half an hour with an exhilarating exhibition that contained many good-humoured but forceful references to his “sweet friend the enemy.” Unfortunately a German censor was present. The next morning the officer was testily buttonholed.
“Captain Arnold,” said the censor, “I do not wish to make any trouble between you and us, but you said last night many things that were most offensive.”
Captain Arnold, whose memories of the preceding evening were shrouded, endeavoured to be jocular.
“Oh, no, surely not! Not offensive; come now, not offensive.”
“Oh, yes, indeed they were most offensive, Captain Arnold. You called us Huns.”
The officer realised that he had been indiscreet, and saw that only one way lay open to him.
“Hun,” he said. “But why not, that’s what you call yourselves, isn’t it?”
The censor looked astonished and aggrieved.
“But surely, Captain Arnold, you know what is a Hun?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“Very good. I will show you.”
The next day the censor appeared bearing a history of Germany in three volumes.
“Now, Captain Arnold, you will find here all there is to know. It is quite simple; no doubt you will be able to borrow a German dictionary, so that you can look up the words. You will find all about it.”
For three days Captain Arnold kept the books, then returned them with many thanks and a promise not to repeat his insults.
“I thought you would understand,” said the German censor. “It is only ignorance on your part that makes you call us Huns. Attila died in A.D. 453. After that there were no Huns. Now you will tell your comrades, and they will understand too.”
The little man trotted off, happy in the thought that his race had emerged from the examination triumphantly vindicated.
§
There were several such matters of minor irritation, but on the whole it was not the Germans, but ourselves, that caused us the most unease. We could have exactly as much intercourse with the Germans as we wanted. There was no need for them to have anything to do with us at all. But there was no escape from the continual presence of five hundred British officers, and the continual conversation of the ten other members of one’s room. For not one moment was it possible to be alone. As the evenings grew darker, the doors of the blocks were closed earlier. By October we found ourselves shut in at six o’clock, with the prospect of a long evening in the room.
Those evenings were appalling. We all got on each other’s nerves. As individuals we liked each other well enough; but it was no joke to be in the constant company of the same people, to hear the same anecdotes, the same opinions. Owing to the limited area of common interests, talk always centered on the war. By the end of six months’ imprisonment nearly every one had got exasperated with his room and the inmates of it. Smith would meet Brown outside the Kantine, and a conversation of this sort would take place.
“My Lord, Brown, but my room is the absolute limit. It drives me nearly wild.”
“But, my dear man, you’ve got some topping fellows in there; there’s Jones and Hawkins and May.”
“I dare say, but you try living with them for a bit. You wouldn’t talk like that then.”
“Oh, well,” Brown would say, “you haven’t got much to grumble at; if you were in my room now.…”
“But your room, Brown; why, there are some tophole men there.…”
And so the world went round. For indeed, however patient one is, it is impossible to live in the same room as ten other men, to eat there and sleep there, to spend half the day in their company, and not get nervy. Before long we had reached that state when we quarrelled over the most trifling things. The slightest inconvenience awoke resentment. All the domestic details that cause friction in a married home were with us intensified a hundredfold. Things had reached a sorry state by the time we had left. There was hardly a single officer who had a good word to say about his room. What we should have been like after another year I dread to imagine.
As it was, it was bad enough. For myself I never stayed in the room one moment more than I could help. Often in the evenings after the doors had been shut, I used to walk up and down the cold stone corridor. Anything to be alone.
The continual presence of sentries and barbed wire; the wearisome sameness of the days, the monotony of the faces, the unchanged landscape, the intolerable talk about the war, all these tended to produce an effect of complete and utter depression: whole days were drenched in an incurable melancholia.
§
Myself, I was lucky to have the medicine of work. For the majority, life resolved itself into a losing fight against listlessness and apathy. In the first weeks a Future Career Society was organised; by which classes in French, German, Spanish, shorthand, bookkeeping, architecture, political economy and music were given. Everyone entered his name for several subjects. The classes numbered forty to fifty. But within a few days the first enthusiasm had dwindled. The average class rarely numbered more than five. A certain section of the camp devoted itself to the preparation of amateur theatricals: a certain number to plans for escape: but the majority of the camp was definitely unemployed. The average officer had nothing to do except stand in a queue to collect his parcels. His days were an effort to kill time, and here the Germans showed their commercial instincts. The Kantine authorities catered for this need, and from sure knowledge of the depression of markets gauged the exact moment when each particular craze would begin to ebb.
The first hobby was wood-carving, an affair so hazardous that the first day numbered about ten per cent, in casualties. It demanded enormous delicacy. There were on sale boxes of all descriptions traced with patterns of labyrinthine intricacy. One could cut photo frames, cigar boxes, paper cutters. To accomplish this labour there were provided small knives of a razor-like sharpness, which under the influence of the least overweight of pressure flew off the box at an alarming angle, to bury themselves in the palm of the other hand. It required enormous patience, and to me appeared one of the most monotonous occupations. It took hours of work to complete the smallest job.
Which, of course, was not at all what the authorities desired. They wanted a hobby which would require a great deal of material and very little time. Wood-carving took much too long; the profits arrived much too slowly, and so they accelerated the slump in wood-carving by the innovation of satin-tasso, which was in every way a more satisfactory craft. To begin with, it gave the personality of the artist a fuller freedom. In wood-carving individual preference was hopelessly bound by the laws of pattern. As in the case of certain modern painters who, having once conceived a “stunt,” proceed to pour the most unlikely moods into one artistic mould, the individual was a
slave to shapes.
Even in satin-tasso there were, it is true, laws and patterns, but there was full scope for the peculiarities of taste. The satin-tasso box had marked on it simply the bare outline of a picture. This one cut round with a sharp knife, and proceeded to colour in with special paints. In the employment of these paints any extravagance was permitted. Mediaeval costumes offered superb opportunities for splendour and pagan gold. Across a pearl-flecked sky emerald clouds could fade into a wash of scarlet. The whole business only took a few hours, which was most advantageous both for the supplier and the supplied.
The Kantine did a roaring trade in satin-tasso, and the portmanteaus of the artisan grew heavy with trophies and souvenirs.
§
The narrow limits of our captivity provided us with only one other craze, the last and the most decadent, for which reason, probably, it was the only one to which I succumbed: Manicure. One evening I went to the Kantine to buy a pencil and saw a row of beautiful plush boxes, in which reposed long-handled files, scissors, knives; and bottles of scents, boxes of polishes and powders. I fell.
From that day onwards our room became a manicuring saloon. Several of us bought sets, and from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. we received visitors. As our guests received free treatment, and the initial outlay towards the opening of the saloon was sufficiently generous, it might have been thought that our guests came out of the transaction rather well. But they paid richly for their adornment in pain. We were all amateurs, and the manipulation of a pair of curved scissors requires feminine skill. No one has ever yet called me neat-fingers, the scissors were very sharp. During the operations of our first fortnight, of all those who came to us with gay step, there were few who went away without at least one finger swathed in bandages.
§
Reading such books as The Escaping Club, I have felt a little ashamed of the lack of success of our own escaping club. But we were faced with formidable difficulties.
