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Escaping Club

<hr style="width: 65%;" />[56] <h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> <h3>REMOVAL TO A STRAFE CAMP</h3> About this time I wrote home for the first time in code. The last time I had been home on leave from France before being taken, I had made up, with the help of the rest of my family, a very rough sort of code depending on the formation of the letters. I wrote a longish message, very small, on a piece of cigarette paper, and stuck it to the flap of the envelope, and then wrote a code message in the letter saying, "Tear open flap of envelope." The letter got through all right, but they failed at home to see that it was in code. The other letters I wrote in code, and I wrote many from Fort 9 (and much more important ones), all got through successfully. At midday on November 12th we came out of prison. We had already been told that we were going to be sent to Ingolstadt; but, though Nichol made inquiries in the camp, no one seemed to know what sort of place it was. We had to leave Clausthal camp about 2 o'clock and walk to the station, so that we had about half an hour in the camp to say "good-bye" and pass on all we had learnt. Both Kicq and I did a good deal of talking during the last hour we spent at Clausthal, and when the sentry came to fetch us we were given a very cheery send-off, nearly all the[57] camp turning out. We had a two or three mile walk to the station, and were escorted only by an N.C.O. with a revolver. In fact, during the whole of this journey we were, quite contrary to our expectations, so badly guarded that I swore I would be properly prepared to escape the next time I had a train journey at night. The little lieutenant met us at the station, and proved to be the most incompetent traveler. Although he asked every one he saw, he never seemed to know how or where to catch any train. In fact, Kicq, who had studied the matter when we had had intentions of trying for Switzerland, knew much more about the route than he did. We had a pretty uncomfortable and very dull journey. At Halle, after we had waited an hour or two in a Red Cross dormitory, the lieutenant made some bad muddle about the trains, and there was also a difficulty because prisoners-of-war were not allowed to travel on a "Schnellzug" (fast train). However, eventually we got into a third-class coach, and after pushing along the corridor, to the surprise of a crowd of peaceful travelers, we got into a third-class wooden-seated compartment. The lieutenant was perfectly hopeless and helpless, and I several times felt inclined to take command of the party and give the conductor a few marks to get us a decent carriage. I had a longish talk that night with him, but he would insist on smoking strong cigars with the window tight shut, and his breath stank so that I was nearly sick. He gave me rather an interesting picture of the Russian front during the big German advance. He said the dirt and discomfort were absolutely horrible. The usual Polish village consisted of[58] huge barn-like buildings where several families lived together with a swarm of children and some half-dozen adults of both sexes. They usually slept, as far as I can make out, on top of the stoves, which were of the big tiled variety. A large number of animals and chickens lived in the same house, or rather room. For billeting purposes as many men as possible were crammed in these places—half a company or more. The whole place was indescribably filthy, and he assured me that every soldier, from a Tommy to a general, was simply covered with lice, and never got rid of them during the whole campaign. He was wounded very seriously early on in the advance. He got a bullet through his "Herzbeutel" (the bag which contains the heart), he said. The lot of the wounded was a terrible one, as they had to be transported on carts, over the worst possible roads, for very big distances to the rail-heads. Altogether he looked back on the Russian campaign with horror. We got to Nüremberg about 2 or 3 a.m. and were put in a room above the police station or guardhouse in the station. We were allowed to buy some coffee and bread, and later got a wash and shave. We got to Ingolstadt some time about midday without further incident, and walked up to the central office of the prisoners-of-war camp. Here the lieutenant said good-bye, and I can't pretend I was sorry to see the last of him. He was quite a good, honest fellow, but one of those hopelessly conscientious people, with no initiative and no sense of humor. After waiting in the bureau for some time we were told we were bound for Fort 9, but could elicit no information[59] as to what sort of place it was. We were told that we should have to sleep the night at the men's camp, as the fort was about 7 kilometres out of the town, and it was either too late or inconvenient to send us out that night. Ingolstadt is a town of some 30,000 or 40,000 inhabitants and is built on both banks of the Danube. The prisoners-of-war camp consists of half a dozen or more old forts, some of which lie on the north and some on the south bank. Fort 9 has the date 1870 above the gateway and as the others are on an almost identical plan, I expect they are much the same date. Besides these forts, which form a ring around Ingolstadt with a radius of about 7 kilometres, there is a camp for men on the outskirts of the town itself. As far as I know, all the forts except one, which is a strafe camp for N.C.O.'s who have attempted to escape, are used for officer prisoners-of-war. Fort 9, as we soon learnt, is the fort where the black sheep go. On our way to the men's camp we passed several working parties, mostly of French soldiers. As far as I could see, they showed no signs of ill-treatment, though I thought some of the Russians looked rather hungry and ill-kept. All we could see of the men's camp was a palisade with several strands of barbed wire on top. An extremely dirty, unsoldierly Bavarian sentry was sloping about outside, apparently having a beat of 200 or 300 yards long. He was merely typical of all Bavarian sentries. They are all, with rare exceptions, filthy and slovenly, and an incredibly large proportion have most unpleasant faces. Before I went to Bavaria as a prisoner, I had always looked on the South German as a kindly man—"gemütlich" is the word[60] they like to use about themselves—but it did not take long to completely change these ideas. I had no longer any difficulty in believing that the Bavarians are justly accused of a very large share in the Belgian atrocities. While I am on the subject I might mention here Kicq's story of how the sack of Louvain was started. The account is supported by what Major Whitton says in his book The Marne Campaign, and makes some excuses for the Germans, though it by no means frees them from blame. The Germans entered and occupied Louvain with little or no opposition, and pushed a fairly strong advance guard through the town in the direction of Antwerp. This advance guard was heavily attacked by a portion of the Belgian army, was defeated, and fled in panic and complete disorder back towards Louvain. The Germans in Louvain took these fugitives for a Belgian attack and fired on them, and they fired back. Very soon there was a general mix-up on a large scale. The defeated advance guard was being fired into by the Belgians on one side and by their own comrades on the other. The civilians in the town also thought that Louvain was being attacked and was about to be retaken by the Belgians. They were determined to do their bit, so they added to the general confusion by firing off all the guns they had left, and, if they had none, throwing furniture, hot water, and anything else handy on the heads of the Germans in the streets. A certain number of Germans were killed and injured in this way, and the German soldiers, furious not only at this but, when they found out their mistake, at having massacred their own comrades, got completely out of con[61]trol and sacked and burnt the greater part of the town. Kicq, at the time when this happened, was in a hospital at Antwerp, so that his is only a second-hand account, but I think that most intelligent Belgian officers believe this to be a fairly true explanation. To return to our story again—just inside the palisade was a group of wooden huts which I imagine were the offices of the camp. We were led through the guardroom, a filthy place with wooden benches running all down the middle, on which still filthier Bavarians were sleeping, drinking beer, or playing cards, and were locked into a small room at the end. We had some food left, and with the help of some nasty looking soup which the Germans brought us we made quite a good meal. There were wooden beds and mattresses in the room, and luckily not sufficient light to allow us to examine them too closely, so we passed quite a good night. Next morning I asked to see the Commandant, who seemed quite a nice old fellow, and requested permission to go over the camp, so that I could testify to other officers that our prisoners were well treated. He answered that to grant my request was impossible. "In that case," I said, "I can only draw the conclusion that you will not let me see the camp because our prisoners are not treated as they should be." The old man said he was very sorry, but it was absolutely "verboten," but he assured me that the prisoners were well treated. An hour or so later an N.C.O. with a rifle turned up, and we were marched off to Fort 9. The whole country round Fort 9, which lies due south of Ingolstadt, is very flat and uninteresting. In fact, it is one of the few really ugly places I remember[62] seeing in Bavaria. There are a few small woods and clumps of trees about, but as there is very little undergrowth in them, they afford only a very temporary shelter to an escaping prisoner—as Medlicott and I found out later. The fort, as you approach it from the north, has the appearance of an oblong mound of earth, some 350 yards long and about 60 feet high. There is a moat 4 to 6 feet deep all around the place, but a small rampart on the outer side of the moat prevents the latter being seen from the south till the outer gate into the first courtyard has been passed. We tramped along the main high road which leads over the Danube directly south out of Ingolstadt, and after walking for well over an hour we began looking about for some signs of a camp, but could see nothing resembling our previous ideas of one. The guard informed us, however, that we had only 200 metres to go, and soon we turned sharp to the right towards the mound before mentioned. We then saw a sentry on one of the two battery positions which flanked the fort, and another on the top of the mound. In another minute or two we came to an iron door in a half-brick, half-earthen wall. Our guard looked through a peep-hole in this and said we could not go in yet, as Appell was taking place. I had a look through the peep-hole. Some 40 yards across a sort of courtyard was a moat, about 15 yards broad, over which there was a roadway with a heavy iron and wire gate, guarded by a sentry. The road led over the moat into another courtyard, at the back of which was a brick wall about 20 feet high with half a dozen large iron barred windows in it. On[63] the top of the wall was some 40 feet of earth sloping backwards and upwards to the center "caponnière," the highest part of the mound, where a sentry stood. In the center of the wall was an enormous iron door leading, to all appearances, into the heart of the small hill in front of us. Through the peep-hole I could follow the moat for 50 or 60 yards in either direction. On the far side of the moat the ground sloped up slightly for 15 metres to a brick wall about 15 to 20 feet (surmounted by 4 or 5 metres of earth) with heavily barred windows at regular intervals all the way along it. The windows in this wall were the windows of our living rooms, and on the strip of grass between the windows and the moat sentries walked up and down. In the courtyard about 200 prisoners-of-war of various nationalities appeared to be mixed up in a very irregular manner; in fact, a good deal of movement was noticeable among them, and from the confused shouting which went on I gathered something exciting must be happening. Suddenly the whole mob broke up and began to stream back into the fort through the main gate. A German from the inside opened the outer gate, and we were marched across the moat, a sentry unlocking the gate for us, into the inner courtyard. Suddenly I saw Milne, whom I had last seen at St. Omer in 25 Squadron. He was wearing an old flying coat and was bareheaded. He greeted me with enthusiasm and surprise. A sentry tried to stop us from meeting, but Milne took no notice of him, and we shook hands. Several other Frenchmen and Englishmen came crowding round us, and then some one began roaring out orders in German at the top of his voice about 10 yards off.[64] I looked up and saw a German captain, who looked like a middle-aged well-to-do shopkeeper (which in fact he was), in a furious rage, gesticulating like a windmill. I gathered that Kicq and I were to be prevented from talking to the other prisoners. I thought that we had probably better obey him, but none of the other prisoners paid any attention whatever to the noise he was making till several sentries bustled us through the main door and into the Commandant's bureau. As we were going in, an Englishman in a beard passed by the side of me saying, "Have you anything to hide?" My compass, which had been given me by a Belgian at Clausthal, was hidden in my big baggage, so I shook my head. A young French officer was in the bureau, and a furious discussion took place between him and the Commandant, who immediately began to shout and gesticulate. As far as I could make out, the Frenchman had been arrested at Appell for refusing to stand still. The Frenchman answered that his feet got cold because, owing to the total incompetency of the Germans, they took much longer than was necessary at Appell. "Aus dem Bureau!" (Leave the office immediately!) yelled the Commandant. The Frenchman tried to speak again, but was drowned by the shouts of "No, no, go out at once, you must not speak to me like that." "Pourquoi non, il n'est pas la manière d'addresser un officier Français," answered the Frenchman; and as he spoke the door behind me opened and another Frenchman entered who, pointing his finger at the Commandant, said, "Oui, oui, je suis témoin, je suis témoin," and went out again. The first Frenchman bowed[65] in a formal manner to the Commandant, who had started to yell "Posten, Posten," and went out of the door just as the sentry entered. The Commandant mopped his brow and seemed almost on the verge of collapse, when Kicq protested against the way he had spoken to us when ordering us into the bureau. This raised another small storm, in which Kicq easily held his own. The Commandant calmed himself with an effort. We were then asked the usual questions by an Unteroffizier and told that we should be in Room 45. Our hand baggage was then searched, and my rücksack was taken from me. To reach No. 45 we went along a very dark underground passage dimly lighted by an oil lamp. At the end of the passage there were some enormous iron doors. These led to one of the two inner courtyards of the fort, and were then shut, as they always were during Appell. A few yards before coming to the door we turned sharply to the right into an extremely dark arched opening. The whole passage was built of solid blocks of stone and had a vaulted roof. After groping our way round a turning, we came suddenly into another passage some 70 yards long, and also of stone. On the left hand was a bare stone wall running up 15 feet to the roof; on the right there were doors about every 4 yards with numbers on them ranging from 39 to 56. Light and air were brought into the passage by square ventilator shafts in the roof which ran up through the 15 feet of earth to the pathway above. At the top of the ventilators glass frames on very strong iron supports prevented the rain from coming in and the prisoners from getting out. Needless to say, the[66] passage was the coldest and draughtiest place it is possible to imagine. Owing to the mound of earth on top, no heat but much dampness found its way into the passage. At the far end were the latrines. These were very insanitary, and the smell of them pervaded the whole passage, into which our living rooms opened. In certain winds they became almost intolerable. A detailed description of them will have to be given later, as they played an important part in many attempts to escape. Room 45 was about half-way along the passage, and we found Captain Grinnell-Milne, R.F.C., Oliphant, Fairweather, and Medlicott, R.F.C., already installed there. The dimensions of the room were, at a guess, about 12 yards by 5 yards. The floor was asphalt and the walls were whitewashed brick. The walls and the ceiling were both curved and together formed an exact semicircle. In fact, the room was very much of the shape and size of a Nissen hut. This is an excellent shape from the point of view of strength, but not very convenient for hanging pictures or putting up shelves. The end of the room farthest from the door was mainly occupied by two large windows looking out over a strip of grass which sloped gradually down to the moat, 15 yards away. These windows were heavily barred with square one-inch bars, three to a window, and sentries passed along the strip of grass from time to time and glanced suspiciously in. If they saw anything that interested them they stood at the window and stared in. There was obviously no such thing as privacy. In each of these rooms five or six men lived and cooked and fed and slept. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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