A Regimental Surgeon

by Dolbey, Robert Valentine

  All the winter and spring, both at Sennelager and Guetersloh, The Continental Times, a vile rag printed first in English, subsequently in Russian as well, was published free, and distributed to the prisoners. It purported to be a neutral newspaper published for the benefit of Americans in Europe. Every page was filled with extracts from speeches and writings of Ramsay Macdonald, Philip Snow-den, Roger Casement and a certain coterie of dons at Cambridge. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, too, wrote of the triumph of German culture and the degeneracy of the country that had given him birth. Much ingenuity was displayed in publishing the lie that contained a grain of truth. It was, of course, obviously a German Government paper, intended to impress and deceive neutrals and depress prisoners. If only one proof were wanted, it was in the tiny column of advertisements. It was clear that the* paper was subsidized; for, in Germany, the advertisements had to pay for the increased cost of paper.

  The Russians in Güetersloh made a well-planned and organised attempt at escape. Their leader was a very able officer, speaking German fluently. Long grey Russian coats were cut down and altered to resemble German tunics; boots, caps and equipment were mysteriously obtained. One wet February evening a file of German soldiers, under an officer, marched across the parade ground to the prison gate. The sentry on duty at the gate presented arms, and the little detachment passed through. The officer turned and cursed the sentry for his slackness in saluting. That was sufficient, all doubt faded from the sentry's mind; none but a German officer would curse a soldier with such a flow of language. Better not report it, thought the sentry, so he said no word about it when the relief came. That night, seven little bundles of clothes in seven little beds. Not strange that they should have their heads covered; so many Russians sleep like that! The house porter made his rounds, satisfied that all his charges were safe and in bed. Next morning, sixteen hours later, came discovery. A pandemonium of yells from the Commandant, who, we hoped, would have a fit, he was so purple with rage; the sentry and the house porter immediately were included in the next draft for the trenches. All games for prisoners were stopped; no smoking allowed in the houses; breakfast half an hour earlier. As usual, the punishment fell upon the English. They all played games; but they, though totally in ignorance of the plot, would cheerfully have suffered ten times the punishment, if these sporting Russians could win their way, in safety, to Holland. There was no pursuit; the Germans are far too wise, and have much better use for their men than to chase prisoners. It is simpler and more effective to stop the roads, the river and canal bridges; anyway, the line of sentries on the frontier would as easily arrest prisoners as German deserters. For over a week these good fellows braved hunger, thirst and cold in February in the wet bushes of the Teutoburger Wald. Within five kilometres of the frontier one fell into a quarry and broke his leg. They must leave him, he insisted, and get on! He would shout and attract attention later on. Given cigarettes and a water bottle he would be quite happy. No! foolish chivalry, making a litter out of branches, will carry the poor wretch the five kilometres to safety. Fatal delay! the precious hour wanted gave the German mounted patrol their chance. Halt! and they fly for their lives into the undergrowth, A fusillade and their leader shot dead; the woods scoured, and the others recaptured and brought back in triumph to Güetersloh. Solitary confinement for a week or two was their lot, and then a fortress from which there will be no more escaping.

  At one camp in Germany—it shall be nameless—the tale is told of another attempt at escape, also engineered by Russians. The sleepy sentries up till now were unconscious of the burrowing moles beneath. Then a new sentry, recovering from a wound, arrived. He was fresh from Flanders, and knew all about mining and counter-mining. For him the "pick—pick " beneath his sentry box in the silent night only too surely tells the story. The clods of earth finally give way, and a Russian head appears. The first man helps his comrades out to meet a ring of smiling German faces around the hole. Too fertile in expedients for escape are these Russians and English; and the fortress has more visitors until the war is over.

  The interpreter in Güetersloh was a snake in the grass; he spoke a mixture of English with American slang. "I know England better than you do," he used to say. We had no doubt of that. The representative of a German business house in England has every excuse to wander round the country; why not make a little pocket money from a grateful Government, when the English are such fools and spying is so safe? He used to put facetious comments, all in execrable taste, in the letters we received from home, and remarks in the private letters that officers wrote from Güetersloh to their wives at home. Rotund and oleaginous, he appeared to be trying to make his position in England secure again when the war should be over. Jovial and hearty, he was suspected on fairly good grounds of having a Scottish wife in Aberdeen. The most warlike of high knee boots clothed his shapeless nether limbs. Many a letter of ours he destroyed; of that I have only too certain evidence.

  He used to get Punch and the Daily Mail; we might see the cover and the dates, no more. Afterwards, it became clear to the returned prisoners that some of the fits of rage that the Commandant indulged in coincided with the more pointed of Punch's excellent jests and cartoons. None of us would wish to limit Punch's fun out of consideration for possible reprisals on ourselves. The outbursts of anger were harmless, and we were convinced that the Germans would not hurt us very much for our country's papers. In all the German periodicals there was fury, not at all suppressed, at the English comic papers. We all felt convinced that Punch hit the Germans on a very sore spot. When a particularly biting picture appeared, "An average Prussian family having its morning hate," we were punished by having our deck chairs confiscated. The English alone had these luxuries, bought at great expense from the German canteen. But the Commandant was very touchy one morning: "I will not have the lazy English prisoners lolling in deck chairs, while the sons of the Fatherland are bleeding in the trenches," he remarked. But those chairs were restored a month later. The higher in rank the German officer, the more loudly he shouts at his men; they have no sense of personal dignity in this matter, and believe in the value of noise to point their orders. How he hated us! and how we cherished that hatred! What a compliment to the English and all that we were doing in the war!

  We read all the German papers, and they were full of English news; at least two-thirds of every edition consisted of articles dealing with England, her share in the war, and the speeches of her Ministers. They never omitted anything in the more important speeches made by our responsible Ministers; but they cleverly took the sting out of them for the benefit of the German public, by contrasting them with the unwise speeches of other English politicians, who might be, as far as the unenlightened German masses were concerned, of as great importance as the Cabinet. Always great attention was paid to all that Lord Kitchener said; his speech on the treatment of English prisoners did more good to us in Germany than any other effort. Whenever a strong speech was made by an English Minister, the Berliner Tageblatt would point out in a foot-note, "How can the German people now doubt that England is our chief enemy; that her desire is to humiliate us? Read these English speeches and understand that no peace can be made with this nation of pirates."

  But there were other articles in the papers, too, some by "neutral diplomatists," others by "a high authority at the Vatican." These were all feelers to test the pulse of public opinion. They would suggest that Belgium should be restored, that Poland be given up, and wait to see the storm of indignation that followed in the Press. But there was always the conviction, all through Germany, and noted often in the periodicals, that in spite of undoubted German victories, the German armies had never gained the decisive strategical or political victory that should have been their reward. Often they longed for the genius of a Napoleon to have snatched the ultimate decision of victory. But all their leaders feared to take the gambler's risk and win or lose it all.

  Do not let us forget, in the contemplation of our own national mistakes, and their
name is legion, that the Germans have made blunders too. One cannot too often insist that the German blunders were epoch-making. Four stand out as decisive in this war. If any one of these four mistakes had not been committed, the war would have been over and France overwhelmed. A defeated France, and as the Kolnische Zeitung says, "what better lever could we have to extort concessions from England?" Germany has lost the war four times and she knows it!

  Our military methods were a constant puzzle to the authorities in Güetersloh. How could an Irishman, for example, be an officer in the East Kent regiment, an Englishman in the Scottish Borderers? Who ever heard of a Wiirtemberger an officer in a Prussian battalion?

  There was only one punishment in Germany for all offences or crimes, and that was to go to the "Krieg." Was it burglary, bigamy, disobedience of orders, attempts to malinger, the merest suspicion of being a Socialist, a suggestion that a sentry was kind to prisoners, and the sentence was the same. The fear the elderly Landsturm had of the trenches and the war kept a silent tongue and strict discipline in all men of military age. Only the aged and the women dared to complain; and they, as in all countries, were most vindictive towards their enemies.

  The Iron Cross distinction has, unfortunately, drawn a great deal of spiteful and ungenerous comment in England. It is a very distinguished order, and loses none of its distinction by being somewhat freely bestowed. There are several classes of the Iron Cross; the higher grades of this decoration are given to successful diplomatists, General Officers in high command and many other hardly worthy people. But the Iron Cross, as we understand it, of the lowest class is given to every soldier of a battalion that distinguishes itself in action. For instance, one whole division of the German Army which stormed the Zwinin Ridge in the Carpathians and turned the hitherto successful advance of the Russian Army into defeat, was decorated. The German Government presumes that every man in Germany does his duty to his country; but it draws a very fine distinction between the man who does his duty and risks his life and the man who does his duty, draws big pay and enjoys war bonuses in safety. The latter, I need hardly say, does not get the Iron Cross. But the infantry in the trenches, the men who win the fight and pay the price, they get it, and if they do conspicuously well, they get another Iron Cross of a higher order as well.

  The incidence, the bestowal and the multiplicity of our decorations makes one wish for the juster and more simple German plan. The regiment to which I was attached in France has still some officers and men left who were at Mons and have been in all the fighting since. Every such officer, N.C.O. and man has earned a war decoration ten times over; but their names do not appear in the honours list. In Germany the whole battalion would have been decorated long ago.

  There was an officer in Güetersloh who, on occasion, appeared to be quite a human person. He was the head doctor, and had returned from the States to Germany at the outbreak of war; he had been captured by an English cruiser, while a passenger on an Italian ship, and released in virtue of his age. Placed in medical charge of the camp, he proved very kind to our officers in an official way; but even he was overwhelmed by the Prussian machine. To me he was good, allowing me to work in the hospital and to look after our own officers. The English medical officers at Guetersloh were not permitted, as a rule, to work in hospital; all the work was done by French, Belgian and Russian doctors under the orders of this German surgeon. But even when we would be talking of America or even of medical subjects, his attitude would undergo a complete change, if his orderlies were near. Naturally an exceedingly kind and able surgeon, he dared not show his character, but had to adopt a formal, official brusqueness in the presence of his men. When we left Guetersloh he dared not come to see us off, as he would have liked to do; but he merely waved his hand behind the curtain of his bedroom window. How such a man, whose loyalty to Germany was above any breath of suspicion, could have allowed his natural courtesy to be over-ridden by the want of moral courage to risk the fear of being misunderstood, it was hard to understand. He was the kindest man I met in the whole of Germany, and he would look after our officers well, when the time came for us doctors to go. One day, on parade, the interpreter asked whether any of us who had influential friends in England would give him our names. For this strange request we asked his reason. There was none, it was an order given to him; perhaps it was to improve the condition of the prisoners. But we suspected some Schweinerei; and determined not to commit ourselves to any course that would enable distinctions of any kind to be made between us. "All British officers," we answered, "have so many influential friends that it would be a matter of difficulty to decide a point like this." In three days' time we discovered the reason. The German Government was determined on reprisals; to punish us for the differentiation in the matter of treatment of submarine men and other sailor prisoners in England. Three of our officers were chosen, two of them being of Guard regiments. They were taken to Cologne, to the military prison, for six weeks, with solitary confinement. No talking; no smoking; half an hour's exercise in the prison yard daily. For the first three days they were devoured by bugs, until the Commandant gave orders to have the cells washed in paraffin. All reprisals on prisoners are futile and contemptible. When we enter into a competition in reprisals with Germany, one can very soon see who is going to win. Anyhow, it is an unkind thing to visit one's disapproval of certain conditions of warfare on helpless captives. One cannot be too kind to prisoners.

  There was always a certain degree of excitement in the camp when a new draft of soldiers went oft to the trenches. The Commandant would address them in his best fire-eating style. "How fortunate they! to be about to spill their blood in the trenches! Contrast their position with his! Unable, by the infirmities of age, to die for his country on the fields of glory." He threw his useless sword upon the parade ground, after one such harangue, and forgot all about it when he was lifted on to his white horse. The subsequent procession, with the local brass band, was halted until his senile wits could remember what he had done with it, and an orderly could be despatched to pick it up. But the draft did not in the least want to spill their blood on the field of glory. We knew that very well, for one of them was a house porter in one of the buildings and he implored us to say that the war would soon be over. But we did not like his way with us in the past, and I fear that we could give him but very cold comfort, pointing out the privileges of being allowed to die a hero's death, much in the same way as did the Commandant. Nor was it long before he found the special Valhalla that is reserved for German warriors. For in ten da}^s' time we heard that he had met death in Flanders.

  The German officer in his long blue cloak with its high dark-blue collar, is a very splendid person; even the deficiencies of the Teutonic figure are gracefully hidden beneath its folds. The broad beam, the champagne-bottle thighs are well obscured. His shapeless legs are encased in the most hideous of gaiters. Nothing English or well fitting about them, they are almost cylindrical in shape; for they are not made to fit the wearer, but are manufactured, by order, of the comfortable roominess that sturdy Teuton legs demand. The German officer's cap is lighter and far better made and designed than our own. It is constructed of soft stuff and rises well in the front above the peak. But the German cavalry officer is often found in English gaiters and English field boots, with comfortably wide and shapely riding breeches.

  For obvious reasons one cannot write fully of prisoners' camps in Germany whilst the war continues. Much has to be suppressed for the sake of the unfortunates who remain. We were all convinced that there would be no more reprisals, nor any fear that prisoners would be shot, provided our own Government continued to treat German prisoners, in England, as it does at present. Only if there were great social upheavals, of which we saw no sign whatever, did we think that there was any fear of our parcels of food being confiscated. The German Post Office is the best thing in the country, and after the first three months we felt that nearly every parcel, if well addressed, reached its destination. There is a very genu
ine pride among the Germans in the excellence of their Post Office; and they would resent, most strongly, any suggestion that they might be guilty of such a contemptible act as to steal parcels of prisoners' food.

  Towards the end of June we got news that some, perhaps all, the medical officers were to be returned to England. The other officers in Guetersloh heard of it with mixed feelings; partly of sorrow that they were losing us and their only bulwark in case of illness; partly of great gladness that we were really to be free. They came to see us off when the morning arrived and sat with us at breakfast, but not to eat. We did all the eating. They were too sad to think of food just then, and their eyes in some cases were not innocent of tears.

  On our way we foregathered at Sennelager to collect the N.C.O.'s and men of the R.A.M.C. and to pick up other medical officers. The conditions there were much better than at the time of my departure some four months before. Sanitation and hygiene had so much improved that the fear of epidemic diseases was largely over. Baths were regularly given to our men, and they had ovens in which to bake their clothes. A great cloud had lifted from that unhappy camp. For, far worse than the horrors of war is the daily dodging of the destroying Angel within relentless barbed-wire fences, when death, in the form of typhus or cerebro-spinal-meningitis, claims its daily toll of victims. The fact that no one can get out of the camp; the knowledge that nothing is being done to relieve; the helplessness in the fight with lice, the ubiquitous hosts of these dread diseases—all these constitute the terror that stalked through all the prisoners' camps in Germany.