CHAPTER VI
The Day of Rest
Sunday came and I was overjoyed to learn that it was observed even in Germany. I was feeding the cows when they told me the good news. I finished feeding them with enough haste to give them three kinds of indigestion and ran over to the next farm to see my mate, Albert, who had come to the village along with me. I located him by the strains of “Carry Me Back to Dear Old Blighty!” played on a mouth harmonica, and coming from the little room adjoining the cow stall. We greeted each other as though we had been separated for years.
“Well, old boy, what do you think of it?” I asked.
“All right, but blooming lonesome. Say, what would you have said to a bloke in ’14 if he had told you you’d be a farmer’s boy in Mecklenburg, Germany, today?”
“I’d have said he was mad,” I said laughing. “But I expect we are lucky. It’s better than digging trenches or making munitions for Fritz. Say, how’s your grub? I can’t go their black bread, can you?”
“No, it’s like eating straw, but they say we’ll get used to it. Did you notice them eating jam on the meat and prunes with the spuds?”
“Yes. Mad beggars, aren’t they?”
I thought of the two cigarettes which I had saved for us to smoke together and pulled them out. He grabbed one of them like a drowning man grabs a life-preserver, and lit it.
“Here’s a cigar for you,” he said. “Cut it up and smoke it in your pipe. I can’t go them. The boss gave it to me last night. He is the mayor of the village, you know, sort of a toff. Came in the stall, queer like, and says, ‘Krieg’—that means war, don’t it?—‘Krieg, nicht gut, Albert,’ and he gives me this. ‘Rauchen,’[5] he says. I think he must have been drunk.”
Group of English Prisoners Working on the Farms of
Kossebade. The Author has a Pipe in his Mouth, and Albert, Mentioned in
Chapter VI, Stands at his Right
I told him about my own adventures, and we laughed together. He had fared somewhat similarly, but he was a trained farmer and he got along more smoothly with the work.
“I wonder what the boys in the bat would say if they could see me wringing out shirts with Gretchen!” he said laughing.
“Or me sawing wood with Erna!” I added.
“Al-l-bert! Al-l-bert!” came a voice from the house.
“Well, that’s breakfast,” said Albert. “I’ll be going in. Isn’t it a game, eh?”
“Aye,” I agreed, “Ain’t it a game! So long!”
“So long. See you after!”
After breakfast we went out for a walk and visited the other prisoners in the village, especially the three other Englishmen, and the two old Frenchmen who had been in the village since ’14. The five Serbians formed a little group of their own and the Russians, some thirty-five in number, formed another. The latter had one Sunday pastime, Einundzwanzig. Month in and month out, some of them for two, three and four years, they followed this monotonous existence—six days of work and one of cards.
From that day until the armistice, we seven Englishmen and French were fast friends, and every Sunday found us together. In the tavern, by the village pond, or seated on the manger in some cow stall, we talked and laughed and sang and longed for the Day of Deliverance to come.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Smoke.