A Captive at Carlsruhe and Other German Prison Camps

III
Funeral of a Prisoner of War

One morning at roll-call the German N.C.O. all unwittingly called, “Captain H——!” Then more insistently, “Captain H——!” And still again.

There was no reply. Captain H—— had died in hospital the night before of pneumonia, contracted through exposure when his ship was torpedoed.

I was appointed to represent our hut at the funeral. That morning, immediately after breakfast, something of a stir was to be observed about the camp, and presently the officers who had been elected to attend the funeral began to assemble in front of the Commandant’s hut.

Many of the uniforms presented considerable compromise; several of us, myself included, who had been taken in shrapnel helmets and trench equipment, having borrowed Sam Browne belts and aviators’ caps. The Serbian Colonels, however, were decidedly brave, if slightly bizarre, in their brand-new brown greatcoats, with crimson facings, lapels and linings, their horned caps and general appearance conveying to my mind a somewhat whimsical impression of armed, aggressive, and mail-sheathed beetles. The Italian Major of mountain artillery was there with a slanting feather in his cap, while the Commandant himself was resplendently martial in his spiked helmet, with, for decoration, the Iron Cross and, I think, l’Aigle Noir.

Three or four great wreaths, sombre with fir branches and bay, and bearing coloured streamers, are allocated among the various nationalities represented, and forming up more or less in processional order, the party, followed by the somewhat envious gaze of those who remain behind, moves towards the gateway. Some of our number have not been outside these gates for well-nigh a year; one officer, indeed, has preferred to forego this opportunity of liberty for an hour or two in order that he may achieve a complete year of incarceration in the Kriegsgefangenenlager, his anniversary falling due in a few days.

I myself have been captive in this camp for less than two months, yet I feel a panting and palpitating as we wait for the guard to turn the key in the gate; I seem to breathe more deeply when we have passed into the street. In a word, as he moves among us, the senior British officer has warned us that we are on parole.

Two electric tram-cars, connected, await us, and we mount and take our places. It is a cold morning, one of the coldest for some months. A small crowd which has collected gazes silently and not unsympathetically upon the scene. The group consists mostly of children, going schoolward, and perhaps it is owing to the severe cold, but their faces are pinched and thin. It moves me mightily to imagine that we are in any sense of the word at war with these little ones.

As the car speeds through the streets we rub the frost from the panes and gaze out upon the world like a batch of schoolboys on an excursion. Old Maier, the German orderly, indeed, takes particular pains to point out to us places and objects of interest as we pass; the Stadthaus; the monument to the Margrave Charles William, founder of the city, which encloses his dust; the various churches. The architecture is interesting, although, as I understand, we are moving through the least opulent parts of Carlsruhe.

On the outskirts of the town the cars stop in front of a church, where is drawn up a German guard of over a hundred, with a brass band, and a firing-party of fifty men. We file into the chapel, and the wreaths are laid upon the black coffin, which rests under the shadow of a great cross with a bronze Christ. This, and a painting of a miracle of healing, are the only adornments of an interior which is dignified and harmoniously coloured in greys and greens.

“That is the General of the district with the Commandant,” whispers Maier in my ear.

The service is brief and simple. The Lutheran pastor, in black cap and white bands, delivers a short address, reads a few passages from the Scriptures, and engages in prayer. Then the bearers take up their bitter burden and pass down the aisle. One green wreath lies on top of the coffin; it falls off, and I stoop down and replace it. As we reach the door Maier is once more at my ear. “That wreath is from the Grand Duchess of Baden!”

As we pass down the steps the band is playing somewhere in front, softly and sorrowfully, then there is a few minutes’ silence while the procession passes into the avenue leading to the cemetery. Here and there are a few desolate-looking civilians. Now comes the sound of drums; something between a distant thunder-roll and the heavy dropping of rain in a thunder shower. Chopin’s “Marche Funèbre.” I have never heard it played in a more fitting environment. The dark-grey body of German soldiery winds among the trees, which throw up gaunt, leafless branches agonizingly against a dull grey sky.

How illogical is war! I have seen a hundred men—as many as are here assembled for the burial of one—huddled into what was practically one common grave! Surely we are not come forth entirely to bury the dead with ceremony; but to persuade ourselves, to prove as convincingly as may be, that the ancient courtesies, the old kindlinesses, are not entirely dead and buried!

As the music passes into the lyric movement of the march I see wistfulness in the faces of some of the veteran warriors; regretfulness in the very stoop of their shoulders. There is something moving at all times even in the formal and ceremonial grief of man; it is accentuated when he is clothed in the full panoply of war.

A short service over the grave, then the firing-party throw their three volleys into the air, as if making noisy question as to the scheme of things at the unanswering heavens. The brasses seem to make mournful reply that no answer has indeed been vouchsafed. Then, the body being lowered into the grave, each of us casts upon it three shovelfuls of earth, making the sign of the Cross or saluting the military dead according to our creed and conception. And so we leave the poor dust, till it be disturbed by music more insistent and clamorous than the clarions of men!

A French soldier who has died in hospital is also being interred, and, though it is bitterly cold, we all wait until the cortège has arrived, and the burial service—in this case performed by the Catholic priest—has been carried out. As we return through the avenue we overtake the sad, solitary figure of a widow in sombre black leading a boy of six or seven by the hand. Both figures are suggestive of refinement, both faces are pale, and that of the mother is grief-stricken. As we pass I am so near that I almost brush them. I turn and look back at the boy, whose face is full of beauty. The insistent gaze of an enemy officer seems to frighten him, and he shrinks closer to his mother’s side.

A Lecture on Abyssinia

The Rev. Father Daniels, the Roman Catholic priest to whom I have referred, made regular visitation to the camp, and we had, furthermore, occasional ministration from a Protestant divine, the Rev. Mr. Flad. This gentleman appeared in our midst with great suddenness one morning, and there was much ado to beat up a creditable congregation for him. This ultimately being forthcoming, and at the moment when the pastor was inviting us to accompany him with a pure heart to the Throne of Heavenly Grace entered Hans with an urgent and whispered message, which turned out to be an invitation to lunch from the Grand Duchess of Baden. The summons left the good padre obviously preoccupied during the service, and necessitated a postponement of the Communion until the afternoon. This led to a suggestion that the pastor might lecture us in the evening on his experiences in Abyssinia.

The father of Mr. Flad was a missionary in Abyssinia during the reign of King Theodore. His mother, a friend of Florence Nightingale, was a deaconess in the Church. When trouble arose between the King and the British Government—through the ignoring of the former’s letter suggesting a latter-day crusade for the liberation of the Holy Land from the Turks—Flad senior and fifty-eight other Europeans were imprisoned, and many of them had to undergo the punishment of being chained to a native soldier for four and a half years.

The native soldier, it is a relief to learn, was changed every week—a transaction which one can imagine as being welcome as a change of linen!

Ultimately Flad was despatched as Ambassador from King Theodore to Queen Victoria, with whom he had two interviews at Osborne, his wife being meanwhile held as hostage for his return. “I have here your two eyes and your heart,” said King Theodore.

During these difficult and dangerous years Mrs. Flad kept a diary, which was published, but which is now out of print. With the coming of Lord Napier the prisoners were released, and King Theodore came to a tragic end by his own hand. The pastor is hopeful of some day taking up his father’s work and he passed round a book printed in Geëz, I take it, a page of which he reads every day. His father used to tell him how in the native cafés he had heard discussion as to whether the Queen of Sheba who visited King Solomon was ruler of Abyssinia or Arabia.

One need not be in Abyssinia to be chained to a black mood at least, if not a black man. Sitting in the court at Carlsruhe, watching the barbed wire shake and shiver like a man in an ague to the play of my foot, I have been seized with a sudden fear of the horrors from which I have emerged. This fear in retrospect, so to speak, was greater far than anything I can confess to have felt in actuality; as if one who had boldly and blindly crossed a profound abyss on a tight-rope should faint or falter, grow dizzy and fall, having reached firm ground once more; as if one had all the past still to pass through, and it were not possible that one should safely pass through it.

To me, on such an occasion, appeared my buoyant young Italian friend Cotta, who, passing an arm through mine, haled me off for a glass of the atrocious white wine of the country—or at least of the Kantine. Thereafter we walked together in the Close, Cotta giving his English an airing.

“Yes, I speak English very well, very well. Have you see the donkey?”

The little donkey, which, yoked to a little waggon, brings us on most days a load of parcels, and which has become so friendly to an alien officer that even in charge of a somewhat obdurate driver it will make a sudden detour from its course in order to shove its muzzle into my hand, was grazing in the circular grass plot in the centre of the square.

“It is the better German in the camp!” says Cotta. “Ah, I am very sad, very sad,” he proceeds. “I have no letter from my girl, and the Germans have take from me her photograph. Damn! damn!”