 In order to remove all question of doubt in the mind of the reader, it might perhaps be well to state here that the facts as given are the bonafide experiences of Corporal Edwards No. 39, No. 1 Company, PPCLI, and as such were subjected to the closest scrutiny both by the author and others before it was deemed advisable to give the account to the public. In particular great pains were taken to do full justice to all enemy individuals who figure in the story. Recognizing the seriousness of the charges implied by the recital, all those concerned with it are extremely anxious that the correctness of the account should constitute its chief value. In short, the intention has been to make of the story a readable history. The main facts, having to do with the destruction of the regiment on the 8th of May 1915, the identity and activities of the individuals mentioned, and the more important of the latter happenings, including the final escape into Holland, are matters of official record and of such have frequently been mentioned in the official dispatches. The more personal details are based on the recollections of Corporal Edwards' retentive mind aided by his very unusual powers of observation and the rough diary which he managed to retain possession of during his later adventures. For the events preceding the capture of Corporal Edwards on the 8th of May, the author has relied upon his own recollections, as he too had the honour of having been an original Patricia. GP, September 1, 1917, Toronto, Canada. CHAPTER I. Polygon Wood The Princess Patricia's had lain in Polygon Wood since the twentieth of April, midway between the sanguinary struggles of St. Julianne and Hill Sixty, spectators of both. All those subjected to constant alarm we had had a comparatively quiet time of it, with casualties that had only varied from five to fifty odd each day. By day and night the gunfire of both battles had beat back upon us in great waves of sound. There were times when we had donned our water-soaked handkerchiefs for the gas that always threatened but never came, so that the expectation might have shaken less steady troops. Quick on the heels of the first news of the gas the women of Britain, their tears scalding their needles, with one accord had laboured, sans rest, sans sleep, sans everything, so that shortly there had poured into us here a steady stream of gauze pads for mouth and nostril. For the protection of our lungs against the poison of the gas they were at least better than the filthy rags we call handkerchiefs. We wore their gifts and in spirit bowed to the donors, as I think all still do. We soaked them with the foul water of the nearby graves and kept them always at our side, ready to tie on at each fresh alarm. Once there had came word in a special army order of the day. Our Belgium agents report that all enemy troops on this front have been directed to enter their trenches tonight with fixed bayonets. All units are enjoined to exercise the closest watch on their front. The troops will stand, too, from the first appearance of darkness, with each man at his post prepared for all eventualities. Sleep will not be permitted under any circumstances. The consequence had been that that night had been one of nervous expectation of an attack which did not materialize. We always carried fixed bayonets in the trenches, but the Germans were better equipped with loopholes, as they were with most other things, and were forced to leave their bayonets off their rifles in order to avoid any danger of the latter sticking in their metal shields when needed in a hurry. To say nothing of the added attention they were drawn in their exposed and stationary position at the mouth of a loophole. The stand, too, had come as a distinct relief that morning. And always there had been the glowing fires of a score of villages. The great mass of burning epress stood up amongst them like the warning finger of God. Occasionally the roaring burst of an ammunition dump flared up into a volcano of fiery sound. The earth under our feet trembled in convulsive shutters from a cannonade so vast that no one sound could be picked out of it, and the walls of dugouts slid in, burying sleeping men. But like the promises of God there came to us in every interval of quietness, as always, the full-throated song of many birds. Our forces consisted of the French who held the left corner of the Epress Alliant, then the Canadian division in the centre, next the twenty-eighth division of the regular British army, and then our own, the twenty-seventh, with hill sixty on our right flank. The enemy attacked both at hill sixty and at the line of the Canadian division and the French, and we held on to the horseshoe-shaped line until the last possible moment when one more shake of the tree would have thrown us up like ripe fruit into the German lap. So near had the converging German forces approached to one another that the weakened battery behind our own trenches had been at the last turned around the other way and fired in the opposite direction without a shift in its own position. For our own protection we had nothing, and later still these and all our guns left us to seek new positions in the rear so that only we of the infantry remained. Daily there had come orders to stand too in full marching order to evacuate, at which all ranks expostulated angrily, and then perhaps another order to stick it another day, at which we cheered and slapped one another boisterously on the back so that the stalled Germans over Yonder must have wondered knowing what they did of our desperate situation. But the dreaded order came at last and was confirmed, so that under protest and like the beaten men that we knew we were not we slunk away under cover of darkness on the night of the third of May, two trenches three miles in the rear, and with us went the troops on ten more miles of British front. The movement as executed was in reality a feat of no mean importance on the part of the higher command, faced by an overwhelmingly superior force, our badly depleted three divisions had barely escaped being bagged in the net of which the enemy had all but drawn the noose in a strategic surrounding movement. In detail the movement had consisted of withdrawing under cover of darkness with all that we could carry of our trench material, both to prevent it falling into hostile hands and equally to strengthen our new position. A small rear guard of fifteen men to the regiment had held our front for the few hours necessary for us to shake down in the new position. Their task was to remain behind and to give a continuous rapid fire from as many different spots as possible in a given time, thereby keeping up the illusion of a heavily manned trench. Then they too faded quietly away following us. Our new trenches were three miles behind those we had just evacuated in Polygon Wood. Zellaback lay behind to the left and beyond that Huga. We were in the open with Bell Ward Wood and Lake behind us. We continued to face vastly superior forces. To make matters worse the trenches were assuredly a mockery of their kind, and there was even less of an adequate support than before. And at that the drafts arrived each day. If they were lucky enough to break through the curtains of fire with which the enemy covered our rear for that very purpose, as well as for the further one of curtailing the arrival of all necessary supplies of food and ammunition. Every camp and hospital, from Ypres to Ru'e, and the sea and from lands and to Jano Groot, was combed and scraped for every eligible casualty, every overconfident office-holder of a cushy job, and in short for all those who could by hook or crook hold a rifle to help stem this threatening tide. And in our own lot, even those wasteful luxuries, the petted officers' servants were amongst us, doing fighting duty for the first time, so that we almost welcomed the desperate occasion which furnished so rare and sweet to sight. CHAPTER II. THE FOURTH OF MAY. We suffered cruelly on the fourth. The dawn had discovered two long lines of men, madly digging in plain sight of one another. There was no firing except that one little storm when the stronger light had shown our rear guard ridiculously tangled up with the screen of German scouts, so that some of each were nearer to foe than to friend, and so had foes on either side. They shot at one another. Some of us in our excitement shot at both, scarce able to distinguish one from the other. Others amongst us strove to knock their rifles up, and the Germans in their trenches shot too. Both of us of the main bodies continued to respect the tacit truce imposed by the conditions under which we found ourselves, insofar as we ourselves were concerned, and fired only at the poor fellows in between. As for them, I fear the absurd nature of their tragic plight excited more of wonder than of concern. They merged into hedges and ditches swallowed them. Their case was only one incident of many, and what becomes of them I have never heard, except that Lieutenant Lane who commanded our rear guard was with us on the eighth, so I presume that some must have crawled up to us that night, and so saved themselves for the moment. Anything else would have been a great pity for so brave a squad. The digging continued until the better equipped Germans had finished their task, when they sought their holes with one accord, an example which we as quickly followed. This was at nine o'clock on the morning of the fourth of May. From then on until dusk, the intensity of a furious all-day bombardment by every known variety of projectile had been broken only at intervals to allow the nearer approach of the enemy's attacking infantry. The worst was the infallade fire of two batteries on our right, which with six-inch high explosive shells tore our front line to fragments, so that we were glad indeed to see the night come. Only once had ours replied, one gun only. That was early in the morning. It barked feebly, but drew so fierce a German fire that it was forever silenced. Some infantry attacks followed, but were beaten off. Only a week-half of the battalion was in the front-line trench. The remainder were in Bellward Wood, the outer fringe of which was a bare one hundred yards behind the front line. They were fairly comfortable in pine-bow huts, which were, however, with some of their occupants badly smashed by shell-fire that day. The outcome was that although all attacks were beaten off, our losses were well on to two hundred men, most of whom were accounted for in the more exposed front-line. The order had been that we were to hold this front-line for several days more, although the regiment had been in the trenches since April the twentieth, and except for a march back from Epress from Polygon Wood since early April. But after such a smashing blow on men who were already thoroughly exhausted, the plan was changed and our line was taken over by the King's Shropshire Light Infantry. The Shrops, we called them, a sister regiment in our brigade, the eightieth. Chapter 3 Corporal Edwards takes up the tale. It was on this day I rejoined the regiment. I had been wounded in the foot at St. Aloy in February, and had come up in a draft fresh from hospital, and had lain in the supports at the huts all of the forth. The survivors of the front-line fire joined those at the huts shortly after nightfall. They were stupid from shell-fire, two days to talk. I saw one man wandering in half-circles, looking to himself, and with a heavy pack on. There were others in worst spite, so there was no help for him. Myself, I was too engrossed in a search for my comrade Woods to bother with other men less dear, however much I might sympathize with them. He and I had been mates since Toronto days, had made good cheer together in the hot August days of mobilization at Ottawa, and had rubbed mess-tins together under the starry sky at Levy's, before the Great Armada had taken us to English camps and other scenes. It was he who had fetched me out of danger at St. Aloy, and now it was my turn. They told me he was somewhere on a stretcher. I searched them all, I struck matches, and was met by quarrelous curses. I knelt by the side of the dying. I inquired of those wounded who still could walk, but find him I could not. It appears that a new and heavy mustache had helped to hide him from me. I was in great distress, but in the fullness of time and when our small circles had run the route. I discovered him in Toronto. The word was that we were to go to Vlamortingy, where the zeppelins had bombed us in our huts. It lay well below Threatened Ypres. We of No. 1 Company passed Bellward Lake. With its old dugouts and its smells and struck off across the fields, the better to avoid the heavy barrage of fire which made all movements of troops difficult beyond words. We reached the railroad up and down which the inquirer dimes the battalion had been want to march to and fro to the polygon wood trenches. The fire became heavier here and the going was rough, so that what with the burden of packs which seemed to weigh a ton and all other things, we moved in a mass as sheep do. Then slung rifles jostled packs, good friends cursed one another, both loud and long. This was trench nerves. Shortly we ran into a solid wall of barrage fire. The officer commanding the company halted us. We were forepushing on to that rest, each aching bone and muscle, each tight stretched and shelled dazed nerve fairly screamed aloud for. But he was adamant. We cursed him. He pretended not to hear. This also was trench nerves. It was growing late. The star shells became fewer. The searchlights ceased altogether. In half an hour those keen eyes and distant trees and steeples would have marked us down. And what good then the agony of this all night march! Better to have been killed back there at Bellwardy. We were still a good two miles from Epris Town. The officer literally drove us back over the way we had come. His orders had anticipated this, eventually so that rather than force the passage of the barrage fire merely for a rest we should rest here, where no rest was to be had. Undoddardly if we had been going up it would have been different. We should have gone on. No fire would have stopped us. The half hour limit brought us to a murky daylight and an old and sloppy support trench, which boarded the track and into which we flung ourselves to lay in the water in a dull stupor that was neither sleep nor honest waking. Later, when the rations had been dished out, we bestirred ourselves and so found or dug queer coffin-shaped shelves in the ether wall. Out of courtesy we called them dugouts. I do not remember that anyone spoke much of the dead. The rain stopped, and for a time the unaccustomed sun came out. We drove stakes in the walls above our coffins, huddled sandbags and hung them in spare equipment over the open face, and then crawled back into the water which, as usual, was already forming in the hollows that our hips had made where we lay. Until noon there was little herd, but the thick breathing of weary men. Occasionally one tossed and shouted blasphemous warnings of mint, imagery and bursting shells. Were at, those within hearing whined in a tired and hopeless anger, and, if close by, kicked him. Trench nerves. All day the fire of many guns sprayed us. Nearby the well-defined emplacement of one or own batteries invariably drew to the entire vicinity a heavy fire, so that one shell broke fairer amongst our sleeping men. Major Galt comes back. The king is dead. Long live the king. Back to Belivada, the seventh of May. That was on the fifth. In the afternoon young Park came to us. He was the commanding officer's orderly. There was down on his face, but he was full of all that strange wisdom of a trenchman who had experienced the bitter hardships and the heart-breaking losses of a winter in the cursed salient of Saint-Élois by Shelley Farm and the Mound of Death. But just now this infant of the trenches had the round eyes of a startled child, which in him meant mad excitement. The CO's hit. The word slid up the trench. The CO's hit. Strike me! Can't this bleeding regiment-keeper bleeding Colonel? That makes two of them. How did it happen? What the devil are we gonna do? Who says so? The second in six weeks. Parky. By this mobs in a hell of a fixed bow. Park was leaning on his rifle, trench fashion. I'll dry up. You give me a pain. And then he launched his thunderbolt. Galt's back! The chorus of despair became one of wild delight. We're Jake. He'll see us through. Where is he? Out his arm. Their son of a gun couldn't keep him away, could they? No fear. Not him. Bloody Well wanted to be with his bleeding boys, he did. He ain't Bloody Well gonna do his bloody soldering in a cushy job in Blighty like some of them. Not after rising us. Do it with his bloody self like a man, and that's what he is." The speaker glared accusingly, but his declaration agreed too well with what all thought for any one to take exception to it. The new commanding officer had been wounded at Saint-Eloire on March the 1st, and this was our first intimation of his return. Park took up his tail. He's over there with the C.O. now. And switching. Shell Splinter got him in the eye. Guess it's gone, and maybe the other one too. Bye. He burst out passionately. I hope it don't. He's been damn good to me, and to you, fellows, too. He added fiercely, while his lower lip quivered. I think all stared anywhere but at park in a curious embarrassment. Got it going from one trench to another to see about the rations coming up, instead of staying in like a dugout waller. Got out on top of the ground, walked across and stopped one. He added bitterly. A considerable draught of old boys, ruddy of face and fresh from hospital, together with some more new men, reached us that night. We went up again with the dusk of the following night, and took over our previous trenches in front of Bellowarda Wood. We were told that the structures had been rather badly cut up in the interval of their occupation, by a further course of intense bombardment and some fierce infantry fighting. Nevertheless, the trenches had been put into much better shape since our earlier occupancy of them, so that what with our work that night they were by the morning of the seventh in fairly good shape. The night was not unusual in any way. There was the regular amount of shelling of star shells of machine-gun and rifle-fire and, of course, casualties. Those we always had be it ever so quiet. When the morning stand to, with that mysterious dread of unknown dangers that it invariably brought, gave us nothing worse than an hour of chilly waiting, and later the smoke of the Germans' cooking fires. There were none for us. It was as simple as algebra. Smoke attracted undue artillery attention. The Germans had artillery, we had not. They had fires, we had not. The day rolled by smoothly enough. Except for the fresh graves and a certain number of unburied dead, the smallpox appearance of the shell-pitted ground about might have been thought to have been of ancient origin, so filled with water were the shell-holes, and so large had they grown as a result of the constant sloughing in of their sodden banks. During all these days the German fire on the salient at large had continued as fiercely as before, but had spared us its severest trials. The night of the seventh passed to all outward appearance pretty much in the same manner as the preceding one. End of chapter four Chapter four of the Escape of a Princess Pet This is Librevox Recording. All Librevox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Chapter four Major Gold comes back. The King is dead. Long left the king, back to Bélauada, the seventh of May. There was on the fifth, in the afternoon, young Park came to us. He was the commanding officer's orderly. There was down on his face, but he was full of all that strange wisdom of a trenchman who had experienced the bitter hardships and the heartbreaking losses of the winter and the cursing of the salient by a shady farm and the man of death. But just now this infant of a trencher had the round eyes of a startled child, which in him man-manned incitement. The CO's hit. The words went out the trench. The CO's hit. Strike me. Call this bleeding regimen. Keep a bleeding colonel. That makes two of them. How did it happen? What the devil are we going to do? Who would say so? The second in six weeks. Parkie. Bye. This mobs in the hell of a fixed row. Park was leaning on his rifle, trench fashion. Oh, try out. You give me a pain. And then he launched his cannonball, got back. The chorus of despair became one of wild delight. We are jade. He'll see us through. Where is he? How's his arm? The son of a gun. Could keep him awake a day? No fear. Knocked him, but he well wanted to be with his bleeding boys. He did. He ain't buddy well going to do his bloody soldering a cushy job in blight tea like some of them. Not after raising us. Drip with his bloody cell for a man. And that's what he is. This week I'd like using me, but his declaration agreed too well with my all thought for anyone to take exception to it. The new commanding officer had been wounded at Saint-Enlois on March the 1st. And this was our first intimation of his return. Park took up his till. He's over there with a seal now and switching. Shelf splinter got him in the eye. Guess it's gone and maybe the other one too. Bye. He burst out passionately. I hope it don't. He's been damn good to me and two fellows too. He had a fiercely while his lower lip quivered. I think all stare anywhere but a park. They're curious embarrassment. Got it going from one trench to another to see about the rations coming up instead of staying in like a dark weather. Got out on top of the ground, walked across and stopped one here a bit early. A considerable draft of old boys rode your face and fresh from hospital. Together with some more new men reached us at night. We went up again with a desk of a falling night and took over our previous trenches in front of the Belvarna wood. We were told that the structures hadn't rather badly caught up in the interval of the occupation, but further cause of intense bombardment and some fears in the tree fighting. Nevertheless, the trenches had been put into much better shape since our early occupancy of them. So that what with our work? That night they were by the morning of the seventh and fairly good day. The night was not unusual in any way. There was a regular amount of shelling of star shells of machine gun and rifle fire and of course, casualties. Those we always had been ever so quiet. Even the morning stand too with that mysterious dread of unknown changes that invariably brought, given nothing worse than our off-chilly waiting. And later, the smoke of the Germans cooking fires. Never known for us. It was a symbol as algebra. Smoke attracted unto artillery attention. The Germans had artillery. We had not. They had fires. We had not. The day rolled by smoothly enough, except for the fresh graves and a certain number of embedded. The smallpox appearance of the shell pits at ground about might have been thought to have been of ancient origin. So felt with water, were the shell holes, and so large had they grown as a result, as a result of the constant slowing in of the sudden banks. During all these days the German fire on the salient had large and continued as per se as before, but spare us its severe trials. The night of the seventh passed while artwork appearance pretty much in the same manner as the Brazilian one. CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER V OF THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PATT by George Pearson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Venditti, mikevenditti.com. It seemed as though I had just stepped off my whack of sentry-go for my group, when a kick in the ribs surprised me that it was stand-to. I rubbed my eyes, swore, and rose to my feet. Such was the narrowness of the trench that the movement put me at my post at the parapet, where in common with my mates I fell to scanning the top for first signs of day and the Germans. The latter lay on the other side of the ravine from us as they had since the fourth, except for such times as they had assaulted our position. The smoke from a prey, and all the close-pack villages of a thickly populated countryside, rose sullenly on every hand. Over everything there hung the power of the mist-ridden Flemish morning, deadly quiet, as was usual at that time of the trench day, when the tenseness of the all-night vigil was just merging into the revealing daylight. At half-past six the stillness was punctuated by a single shell, which broke barely in our rear. And then the ball commenced. The most intense bombardment we had yet experienced. Most of the fire came from the batteries and concealed positions on our right. Whence, as on the fourth, they poured in a very destructive infallate fire, which swept up and down the length of the trench like the stream of a hose, making it a shambles, each burst of high explosive shells, each terrible pulsation of the atmosphere, if it missed the body, seemed to rend the very brain, or else stupefied it. The general result was beyond any poor words of mine. All spoken languages totally inadequate to describe the shocks and horrors of an intense bombardment. It is not that man himself lacks the imaginative gift of words, but that he has not the word tools with which to work. They do not exist. Each attempt to describe becomes more effrontery and demands its own separate apology. In addition, kind nature draws a veil for him over much of all the worst of it. That many details are spared his later recollection. He remembers only the indescribable confusion and the bursting claps of nearby flame, as foul in color and as ill-smell as an adled egg. He knows only that the acid of the high explosive gas eats into the tissue of his brain and lungs, destroying with other things most memories of the shelling. Overhead an airplane buzzed. We could barely describe the figures of the pilot and of his observer. The latter signalling. No gun of ours answered. The dead and dying lay all about and none could attend them. A rifle was a rifle. This continued for an hour, at the end of which time we poked our heads up and saw the infantry coming on in columns of mobs. Some of them also very prettily. In the open order we had ourselves been taught. Every field and hedge spewed them up. We stood head and shoulders exposed above the ragged parapet, giving them rapid fire. They had no stomach for that and retired to their holes, leaving many dead and grievously wounded. It was at this time that we saw the troops on our flanks falling back in orderly fashion. I called that fact out to the attention of Lieutenant Lane, who was the only officer left in our vicinity. He said that the last word he had received was to hang on. This we proceeded to do, and so, we are told, did the others. We learned later that the battalion roll call that night showed a strength of one hundred and fifty men out of six hundred and thirty five who had answered present twenty-four hours earlier. And the official records of the Canadian eyewitness Lord Beaverbrook, then Sir Max Aitken, as given in Canada in Flanders, state that, those who survive and the friends of those who have died may draw solace from the thought that never in the history of arms have soldiers more valiantly sustained the gift and trust of a lady. Referring to the colour which had been worked for and presented to us by the Princess Patricia, daughter of His Royal Highness, the Duke of Connacht, then Governor-General of Canada, we were on the apex of the line and were now unsupported on either side. It was about this time, I believe, that a small detachment of the King's short brochure, Light and Differentry, a sister regiment in our brigade, fetched to the companies in our rear twenty boxes of badly needed ammunition and reinforced the Princess Patricia's. Following the beating off of their infantry attack, the Germans gave us a short breathing spell, until their machine guns had been retrained on our parapet and a school of light field guns dragged up into place. The airplane came out again, dropping to within three hundred feet of our trench, and with tiny jets of very coloured smoke bombs, directed the terribly accurate fire of the enemy guns, already so close to, but so well insured against any harm from us, that they attempted no concealment and the big guns on the right completed the devastation. This continued for another half hour, at the end of which time there remained intact only one small traverse in the trench, which owed its existence to the fragment of chicken wire that held its sides up. The remainder was absolutely wiped out. This time there was no rapid fire, or even any looking over the top to see if the enemy were coming in. Instead, the Germans fairly combed the parapet with their machine guns. Each indication of curiosity from us drew forth from them such a stream of fire that the top of the parapet spat forth a steady shower of flying mud, and which made it impossible for us to defend ourselves properly. Even had there been enough of us left to do so, the rest was chaos. A bit of pure hell. Men struggling buried alive and looking at us for the aid they would not ask for. Soldiers all, and the Germans now pouring in in waves from all sides and especially from our unprotected flanks and rear, hindered only by the delusional fire of our two weakened companies in the support trenches. We were receiving rifle fire from four directions and bayonet thrust from the Germans on the parapet. Mowed down like sheep. And as they came on, they trampled our dead and bayonetted our wounded. The machine gun crew had gone under to a man. Doing their best to the last. I think Sergeant Whitehead went with him too. At least he was near there a short time before, and I never saw him or any of the gun crew again. The only living soul near that spot was Royston, dragging himself out from under a pile of debris and covered with mud and blood. His face horribly swollen to twice its normal size, blinded for the moment. To quote Canada in Flanders again. At this time the bombardment recommenced, with great intensity. The German bombardment had been so heavy since May 4 that a wood which the regiment had used in part for cover was completely demolished. The range of our machine guns was taken with extreme precision. All without exception were buried. Those who served them behaved with the most admirable coolness and gallantry. Two were dug out, mounted and used again. One was actually disinterred three times and kept in action till a shell annihilated the whole section. Corporal Dover stuck to his gun throughout, and all the wounded continued to discharge his duties with as much coolness as if on parade. In the explosion that ended his ill-fated gun he lost a leg and an arm. And was completely buried in the debris, conscious or unconscious. He lay there in that condition until dusk, when he crawled out of all that was left of the obliterated trench and moaned for help. Two of his comrades sprang from the support trench by this time the fire trench, and succeeded in carrying his mangled and bleeding body. But as all that remained of this brave soldier was being lured into the trench, a bullet, put an end to his sufferings. No bullet could put an end to his glory. George Easton was firing with me at the gray mass of the oncoming horde. One rifle jammed, he cried. Take mine. And I stooped to get one from a casualty underfoot, but a moment later, as I fired from the parapet, my bayonet was broken off by a German bullet. I shouted wildly to Kaisch to toss me one from nearby. Just then the main body of Germans swarmed into the end of the trench. Of this Lord Beaver Brooks says, at this moment the Germans made their third and last attack. It was arrested by rifle fire, although some individuals penetrated into the fire trench on the right. At this point all the princes patricias had been killed. So that this part of the trench was actually...tenantless. Those who established a footing were few in number, and they were gradually dislodged. And so the third and last attack was routed as successfully as those which had preceded it. His conclusion that we had all been killed was justifiable, even though fortunately for me it was an erroneous one. So I am glad for other motives than those of Kaisch to be able here to set him right. Buegler Lee shouted to me, I'm shot to the leg! A couple of us seized him, planning to go down to where the communication trench had once been. But he stopped to sing. It's no good, boys. It's a dead end. They're killing us. Kaisch swore, don't give up, kid. We'll beat the...yet. A German standing a few yards away raised his rifle and blew his head off. Young Brown broke down of this. They had just done in his wounded bow. Oh, look! Look what you've done to Davy and fell to weeping. And with that another put the muzzle of his rifle against the boy's head and pulled the trigger. Young Cox from Winnipeg put his hands above his head at the order. His captor placed the muzzle of his rifle squarely against the palm and blew it off. There remained only a bloody and broken mass dangling from the wrist. I saw a man who had come up in the draft with me on the fourth rolling around in death agony, tossing his head loosely about in the wild pain of it. His pallid face, a white mark in the muck underfoot. A burly German reached the spot and without hesitation plunged his saw-edged bayonet through the throat. Close by another wounded man was struggling feebly under a pile of earth, his legs projecting so that only the convulsive heaving of the loose earth indicated that a man was dying underneath. Another German observed that too and shoved his bayonet through the mud and held it savagely there until all was quiet. This I did not see but another did and told me of it afterward. Sergeant Philpots had been shot through the jaw so that he went to his knees as the bullock does at the slaughtering. He supported himself wavingly by his hands. The blood poured from him so that he was all but fainting with the loss of it. A big German stood over him. Philpots looked up. Play the game. Play the game. He muttered weakly. The German coolly put a round through his head. I was still without a bayonet and seeing these things said to Aston, we'd better beat it. He swore again, yes or murdering us, no use stopping here. Come on. And just then he too dropped. I thought him dead. There was no use my stopping to share his fate or worse. It was now every man for himself. At a later date we met in England. The other half of the regiment lay in support, two hundred yards away in Belleword Wood, and in front of the chateau and lake of that name where my draft had lain on the fourth. I made a dash fort. What with the mud and the mini-shell holes the going was bad. I was indistinctly aware of a great deal of promiscuous shooting at me, but most distinctly of one German who shot at me about ten times in as many yards and from quite close range. I saw I could not make it. I flung myself into a Johnson hole, and as soon as I had caught my breath scrambled out again and raced for the trench I had just left. I was by this time unarmed, having flung my rifle away to further my flight, notwithstanding which another German shot at me as I went towards him. As I landed in the trench an angry voice shouted something I could not understand, and I scrambled to my feet in time to see a German sullenly lower his rifle, from the level of my body at the command of a big black-bearded officer. of a Princess Pat by George Pearson, Chapter Six Prisoners A German version of a soldier's death, the courage of cocks, robbing the helpless, water on the end of a bayonet, the curious case of scot, prussian bullies, why I was covered with a fine sweat. The Germans were by this time in full possession of this slice of trench, and for the next few minutes the officer was kept busy pulling his men off their victims, like slavering dogs they were. He did not have his lambs any too well in hand, however. O. B. Taylor, a lovable character in Number One Company, came to his end here. The Germans ordered him and Hokey Walker to go back down the trench. He had no sooner turned to do so than a German shot him from behind and from quite close, so that it blew the groin completely out, making a terrible hole. We could not tie up so bad a wound, and he bled to death. Hokey Walker remained with him to the last five hours later, when he said, I'm going to sleep, boys, and did so. Fortunately he did not suffer. And all the others, except Young Cox, were equally fortunate, since they were murdered outright. Taylor's was the most calculated of all the murders we had witnessed, and out did even those of the wounded, because the excitement of the fight was two hours old, and he was doing the bidding of his captors at the time. The killing of those who resisted was, of course, quite in order. Why he was killed while Walker was left unharmed and at his side to the last, we did not know, and could only credit to a whimsy of our captors. No punishment was visited upon his murderer or upon any of them so far as we were able to learn. Upon my later return to Canada, I found that Taylor's sister there had received a letter from a German officer, enclosing a letter addressed to her which had been found on her brother's body, together with three war-medals and a Masonic ring. The letter was the key to the incident, since the officer also claimed to have been a Mason. In his letter this officer said that her brother had met us soldiers' death. Some said that our friendly officer was not a German, but an Irishman. I doubted that, but it may have been so, for it was true that his speech contained no trace of the accent which is usually associated with a German's English speech. His was that of an English gentleman, and to him we undoubtedly owed our wretched lives that day. I, in particular, have good cause to be grateful. A German, all of six-foot-four, who swung a tremendously broad Headsman's axe with a curved blade, tried several times to get at me. Each time the officer stopped him. Still he persisted. He apparently saw no one else, and kept his eye farcened on me with deadly intention in it. He pushed aside the others, Prussians and prisoners alike. He foiled the shining blade high above a face lit up with savage exultation, terrible to see, and which reflected the sensual reveling of his heated brain in the bloody orgy ahead. As I followed the incredibly rapid motions of the blade, my blood turned to water. My limbs refused to act, and my mind travelled back over the years to a little Scottish village where I had been used to sit in the dark corners of the shoemaker's shop, listening to him and others of the old Second Gordon's recount their terrible tales of the hillmen on the march to Kandahar with Bob's. And now I felt that same tremendous sensation of fear which used to send me trembling to my childish pallet in the Croft, peering fearfully through the darkness for the oiled body of a naked pertan with his corkscrew crease. Terror swept over me like a springtime flood. He saw no one else. His eye fastened on me in crudest hate. But as he stood over me with feet spread wide and the circle of his axes swing broadening for the finale, the thread of rabbit-like mesmerism broke, and I sprang nimbly aside as the blade buried itself deep in the mud wall I had been cowering against. I endeavored to dodge him by putting some of my fellow prisoners between us. No use. He followed me, shoving and cursing his way among them, swinging his axe. My hair stood on end, and I felt rather critical of their much-vaunted Prussian discipline. Another endeavored to bayonet Charlie Scarf. The officer at last stopped them both. Our captors belonged to the twenty-first Prussian regiment, and were, so far as we knew, the first of their kind we had been up against, all previous comers on our front having been Bavarians and latterly of the army group of Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria, Rupi we called him. They wore the baggy grey clothes and clumsy-looking leather top boots of the German infantrymen. The spiked pickle-hulbann was conspicuous by its absence, and was, we well knew, a thing only of billets and of swank parades. In its place was the soft pancake trench cap with its small coloured button in the front. The enemy were armed for the most part with pioneers bayonets, as well adapted by reason of their sore edges for sticking flesh and blood as for soaring wood, and if for the former an unnecessarily cruel weapon, since it was bound to stick in the body and badly lacerate it internally in the withdrawal, especially if given a twist. The trench front had been about faced since its change of ownership, and the Germans were already casting our dead out of the shattered trench both in front and behind, and in many cases using them to stop the gaps in the parapet, so that they now received the bullets of their erstwhile comrades. We were ordered up and out at the back of the parapet, and then made to lie there. The German artillery had ceased. We had none. Odd shots from the remnant of our fellows still hanging on in the supports continued to come over, but none of us were hit. In all probability they withheld their fire when they saw what was afoot. Some German snipers in a farmhouse at the rear were less considerate, but fortunately failed to hit us. Later we were ordered to take our equipment off and those who had coats to shed them. We did not see the latter again, and missed them horribly in the rain of that day. Two of the Prussians frisked us for our tobacco, cigarettes, knives, and other valuables. This was in bitter contrast to our own treatment of prisoners under similar conditions. True, we had always searched them, but had invariably returned those little trinkets and comforts which to a soldier are so important. And I think our men had always showered them with food and tobacco. We were then marched to the rear with the exception of one who by permission of the officer remained with the dying tailor. There were ten of us all told. I have only heard of a few others who were captured that day. Roberts is still in Germany, and Todeski has been exchanged and is now in Toronto. The latter lay with a boy of the machine-gun crew for a couple of days in the dugout, both badly wounded. A German stumbled onto them. They pleaded for water. The German said, I'll give you water, and bayonetted the boy as he lay. He raised his weapon so that the blood of his comrade dripped on Todeski's face. All right, Todeski cried in German, kill me too, but first give me water, you. The German lowered his rifle in amazement. What, you schwein, you speak the good German? Where did you learn it? In your schools, for Christ's sake, give me water, and kill me. What, you live with us, and then do this? Schwein. All right, I will give you water, and I will not kill you, just to show you how well we can treat a prisoner. Todeski was then taken to the field dressing station, where, according to his own account, his mangled leg was amputated without the use of any anesthetic. But that may have been because in such a time of stress, they had none. Later, he was exchanged. I met Scott in the prison camp a few days later, and he told his tale. It appears that in the confusion of the earlier fighting, he had become separated from the regiment, became lost, and eventually floundered into an English battalion. He reported to the officer commanding the trench, and told his story. The officer had no idea where the patricias lay, and so ordered Scott to remain with them, until such time as an inquiry might establish the whereabouts of his regiment. They were captured, but under less exciting circumstances than occurred in our own case, and the Germans had word that there was a Canadian amongst these English troops. It was one of the first things mentioned. They did not say how they had acquired their information, but shouted out a request for the man to stand forth. When no one complied, they questioned each man separately, asking him if he was a Canadian, or knew ought of one in that trench. They all lied, no. The Germans were so certain that they again went over each man in turn, examining him. Scott was at the end of the line. He began to cut the Canadian buttons off his coat, and to remove his badges. Several men nearby assisted, and replaced them with such of their own as they could spare, each man perhaps contributing a button. They had no thread, nor time to use it if they had, so tacked the buttons into place by all manner of makeshifts, such as broken ends of matches thrust through holes punched in the cloth, anything to hold the buttons in place and tied the hunted Scott over the inspection. He passed. The Germans were quite furious. Scott and his companions could only guess at the cause of this strange conduct, but presumed that the Canadian was wanted for special treatment of an unfavorable, if not of a final nature. To return to our own case. About the middle of the afternoon we were herded by our guards into a shallow depression a short distance in the rear of the trench, and there told to lie down. The officer and his men returned to the trench. Until we were taken back to the trench at six, we were continually sniped at by the Germans in the captured trench. We had no recourse but to make ourselves as small as possible, which we did, and whether owing to the fact that the hollow we were lying in prevented our being actually within the range of the enemy vision, or whether they were merely playing cat and mouse with us, I do not know, but none were hit. Young Cox suffered stoically. His mangled hand had become badly fouled with dirt and filth, and the ragged bones protruded through the broken flesh. So in a quiet interval between the sniping periods, we hurriedly sought the shattered stump of his hand off with our clasp knives, and bound it up as best we could. It was not a nice task for him nor us, but he did not so much as grunt during the operation. The nearest he came to complaining was when he asked me to let him lay his hand across my body to ease it, at the same time remarking, I guess when they get us to Germany they'll let us write, and I'll be able to write mother, and then she'll not know I've lost my hand. He was a most valiant and faithful soldier. The perpetual rain and mist peculiar to that low lying land added to our wretched condition, and increased the pain of the wounds that most of us suffered from. At six o'clock our guards returned, and curtly ordered us to our feet. We were taken back to the trench where our officer friend had us searched again. Here for the first time my two corporals' stripes were noticed, and a mild excitement ensued. Corporal! Corporal! they exclaimed, and crowded up the better to inspect me and verify the report, and jabbering, Yah! Yah! Apparently a captured corporal was a rarity. Strangely enough they paid little or no attention to the sergeant of our party, although he had the three stripes of his rank up. As I happened to be in the lead of our party, and the first to enter the trench, I was the first man searched, and so had to awake the examination of the others. Worn out by the events of the day and the wound I had received early in the morning from a shell fragment, I fell asleep against the wall of the trench where I sat. I was awakened by a poke in the ribs from scarf. Time to shift, mate. I rose to my feet, and, following the instructions of the officer, led the way along the trench. The Germans had already, with their usual industry, gotten the trench into some sort of shape again, with the parapet shifted over to the other side, and facing bell-walled wood. And everywhere along its length I noticed the bodies of our dead built into it to replace sandbags, while others lay on the paradox at the rear. It was not nice. The faces of men we had known and had called comrade looked at us now in ghastly disarray from odd sections of both walls. Already they were taking a brick-like shape from the weight of the filled bags on top of them. In places the legs and arms protruded brushing us as we passed. However, this was war and quite ethical. Naturally we had to crowd by the other occupants of the trench, and each took a poke at us as we went by, some with their bayonets, saying, Ferdamt Engländer and Engländer schwein, pigs of English. Also quite a number of them spoke English after a fashion. There was in these men none of the soldier's usual tolerance or good-natured pity for an enemy who had fought well, and had then succumbed to the fortunes of war. Instead a blind and vicious rage which took no account of our helpless condition. They cuffed us, they buffeted us, they pricked us cruelly with their sore bayonets, and then laughed and sneered as we flinched and dodged awkwardly aside. Then they cursed us. Shortly we were led into the presence of a man whom I shall remember if I live to be a hundred. He wore glasses, and on his upper lip there bloomed such a dainty mustache as is affected by little Willie, as Tommy calls the German crown prince. He had the eye of a rat. It snapped so cruel a hate that one's blood stopped. He seized me by the right shoulder with his left hand. You corporal, you corporal! As though that fact of itself condemned me, and at the same time tugging at his holster until he found his revolver, which he placed against my temple. Then and there I fervently prayed that he would pull the trigger and end it all. I was fed up. The all-day bombardment, the last terrible slaughter of helpless men, the rain and cold combining with the pain of the raw wound in my side, had gotten on my nerves. With the revolver still at my head I turned to scarf. They're going to do us in, Charlie. I only hope they'll do it proper. None of that bayonet stuff. Bullets for me. Already the Prussians were crowding round us threateningly again with their sore-edged bayonets ready, some fixed in the rifle, others clasped short like daggers for such a butchering as they had had earlier in the afternoon, when I had been so nearly axed. Might as well kill us outright as scare us to death, complained scarf bitterly. Nevertheless our hearts leapt when a moment later our mysterious black officer friend hove in sight. Life is sweet. He asked them what they did with us. The tableau answered for itself before the words had left his lips, and then we had to listen to our fate discussed in language and gesture so eloquent and so fraught with terrible importance to us that our sensitized minds could miss no smallest point of each fine shade of cruel meaning. Little Willie thought it scarce worth their while to bother with so small a bag, that it would not be worth the trouble to send a miserable ten of fair-damped englender back to the Fatherland. Better to kill them like the swine they were. Our blood froze to hear the man, and to see the poison of that rat soul of his exuding from his every paw, in every gesture, and in each fresh inflection of his rasping voice, and all his men shouted their fierce approval and shook in our faces their bloody butcher's bayonets. It was a bitter draft. If they had killed us then, it would have had to have been done in most cold blood, exceeding even the murder of Taylor in planned brutality. He at least had not known that it was coming, and had not felt this insane fear which we now experienced, and which made us wonder how they would do it. Would each have to watch the other's end? And would it be done by bullet or by bayonet? We greatly feared it would be the latter. We pictured ourselves held down as hogs are our throats slit. The dark officer thought otherwise, and minced no words in the saying. Our hearts leapt out to him warmly in gratitude. He shortly ordered them to desist, at which they slunk sullenly away, as hungry dogs do from a bone. I felt an uncomfortable physical sensation, and ran my hand uneasily beneath my shirt. I was covered with a fine sweat. We were then escorted under heavy guard out over the fields in the rear, past the nearby farmhouse which was simply filled with snipers. The latter, however, did not shoot at us, presumably because they might have hit some of our numerous guards. We seemed to be working right through the heart of the German army, everywhere the troops were massed. Along the road they lay in solid formation on both sides. If we had had artillery to play on them now, they would have suffered tremendous losses. The whole countryside presented a living target all along the way. They shot at Schwann and taunted us in both languages. Every shell-hole, farmhouse, hut, dugout, and old trench on the three-mile stretch between the front and polygon wood contributed its quota. The regiment had evacuated polygon wood on the night of the third. Across the old trail our fatigue parties had tramped new ones in the mud, up past Regent Street, Lancaster Square, and Piccadilly. We passed them all. We were marched over to the little settlement of Pinebau Huts, which the regiment had previously taken over from the French. The men with me greeted them like old friends. Here was the sniper's hut. There was the commanding officers. This was the hut in which the brave Joel Walden had gone west. That on the side of one where fourteen of ours had stepped a shell while they slept. Memories submerged us, made us weak. Even the guiding rope that our men had used to hold themselves to the trail of night still held its place for groping German hands. Besided lay the fragments of the French Steinboards, chocolate advertisements of mud baths for trench fever, the hotel this and the mansion that. One of my companions pointed to a larger hut which he said our fellows had called the Hotel Cecil. The board was missing now. And no German signboard took its place. Their wit did not run in so richly innocent a channel. The huts lay just off the racetrack in front of the ruined Chateau, buried deep in the remnants of what had once been the beautiful park of a large country estate. These huts were now the German headquarters. There was as much English as German talked there that day. Everywhere there was cooking going on, mostly in portable camp kitchens. As we came to a halt one big fellow smoking a pipe observed nonchalantly, you fellows are lucky our orders were to take no Canadian prisoners. The man was so casual, so utterly matter of fact, and there was about his remarks so simple an error of directness and of finality that there was no escaping his sincerity. Unduly interested, though we were. Another officer said, Englander? The big fellow said, Canadian. The other raised his brows and shoulders. Ah. The younger officer came up. Never mind boys, your turn today might be mine tomorrow. Turning to the others he too said, Englander? No, Canadian. Oh, he appeared to be pleasantly surprised. He asked me for a souvenir and pointed to the brass Canada shoulder straps and the red cloth PPC L.I.s on the shoulders of the others. But I had already shoved my few trinkets down my patees while lying back of the trench that afternoon. Sharf, however, gave up his Canada straps. The young officer gave Henry return a carved net with silver filigree work and gave another man a silver crucifix for the bronze maple leaves from the collar of his tunic, and, more important still, he gave us all a cigarette. While he had a sergeant give us coffee, that, the cigarette was, I think, much the best of anything we received, then or for some time to come. Since the bombardment and our wounding, our nerves had fairly ached for the sedative which good, bad, or indifferent would steady the quivering harp strings of our nerves, and a cigarette did that. The headquarter staff appeared on the scene. They wanted information, just as ours would have done under similar circumstances. But these took a different method to acquire it. As before in the trench, they selected me for the spokesman. The senior officer, a general, apparently addressed me. All many troops are there in front of our attack. I lied. I didn't know. He shook a threatening finger at me. I'll tell you this, my man. We have a pretty good idea of how many troops lay behind you, and if in any particular you endeavor to lead us astray, it will go very hard with all of you. I'll answer my question. His English was good. I conjected. It would not do to tell him the terrible truth that was certain. So I took a chance. Three divisions. He appeared to be satisfied. The fact was, there were none behind us. We were utterly without supporting troops. And Kitchener's Army, how many of them are here now? Why, they didn't even come over yet, sir. Don't tell me that, I know better. They've been out here for months. But they haven't, I persisted. I told the truth this time. Yes, he shouted angrily. No, I flung back. Well, how many of them are there? The division yarn had gone down well, and perhaps I was slightly heated. My spirit ran ahead of my judgment. Five and a half to seven million, I said. He exploded and called me everything but a soldier. I could not help but reflect that I had overdone it a bit. And I certainly thought that I was or then and there. To make matters worse, he asked the others and they profiting my mistake. And following the lead of the first man question put Kitchener's Army at four and a half million, which was only a trifle of four million out. So I determined to be reasonable. When he came to me again, I confirmed the latter figure, explaining my earlier statement by my lack of exact knowledge, and so that particular storm blew over. The general came back to me again. You Canadians thought this was going to be a picnic, didn't you? He was very sarcastic. No, we didn't, sir. Well, you thought it was going to be a walk to Berlin, didn't you? Why, no, we thought it was the other way about, sir, I ventured. He shifted. Well, what do you think of us anyhow? Your artillery was all right, but your infantry was no good. I began to feel shaky again. However, he took that calmly enough. Oh, so our infantry was no good. We could have held them all right, sir. He ruminated on that a moment, rumbled in his throat, and abruptly changed the subject in an unpleasant fashion, however. You're the fellows we want to get hold of. You cut the throats of our wounded. I denied it, and we argued back and forth over that for several minutes, and very heatedly. He referred to St. Julian and said that this thing had occurred there. I said, and quite truthfully, that we had not been at St. Julian. That we were in the imperial and not the Canadian army, and had been spectators in nearby trenches of the St. Julian affair. I even went into some detail to explain that we were a special corps of old soldiers who, not being able to rejoin their old regiments, had at the outbreak of the war formed one of their own, and had been accepted as such and sent to France months ahead of the Canadian contingent. I added that I myself had just rejoined the regiment. Having got my blighty, in March, at St. Deloy, and as proof of my other statements, I further volunteered that I was one of the Second Gordons and after the South African War had gone to Canada, where I had finished my reserve several years since. He listened but was plainly unconvinced. Another officer broke in. I can explain it, sir. These men were in the 80th Brigade and the 27th Division. Colonel Faulkwerer was the commanding officer and Captain Buller took command when Colonel Faulkwerer was killed. We stared at one another in amazement, for it was all quite true. This finished that examination. We did not tell them that Colonel Buller had been blinded a few days before and had been succeeded by that Major Hamilton Galt, who had been so largely instrumental in raising us. None of our wounds had received the slightest attention. Cox in particular suffered cruelly but refused to whimper. Royston's head was swollen to the size of a water bucket and he was in great pain. We left them here and never saw them again. Cox died two weeks later of a blood poisoning, which was the combined result of our rough surgery and the want to neglect of our captors. I do not think he was ever able to write his mother as he wished. At least she wrote me later for information. There was no need of his dying even though it might have been necessary to have amputated his arm higher up. Royston was exchanged to Switzerland and recovered from his wounds except for the loss of an eye. We were marched to Rolls, which we reached well after dark. A considerable crowd of soldiers and civilians awaited our coming. The Belgian women and children congregated in front of the church while we waited to be let in and threw us apples and cigarettes. The Ulans and infantrymen rushed them with the flat side of their swords and the butts of their muskets and mistreated them. They knocked an old woman down quite close to where I stood, so we had to do without and were not even permitted to pick up the gifts that lay at our feet, much less the old woman. The church had been used as a stable quite recently and the stone flag floor was deep with the decayed straw and accumulated filth of men and horses. We lay down on it and got what rest we could for the remainder of the night. There were about one hundred and fifty prisoners in all, sharpshires, chashires, King's Royal Rifles, and other British regiments, all from our division and mostly from our brigade. Other small parties continued to come in during the night, but there were no more PPs. In the morning a large tub of water was carried in and each man was given a bit of black bread and a slice of raw, fat bacon. The latter was salty and so thoroughly unappetizing that I cannot recall that anyone ate his ration. For in spite of the fact that we had been twenty four hours without food, we were so upset by the experiences we had undergone, so shattered by shell-fire and lack of rest, that we were perhaps inclined to be more critical of our food than normal men would have been. Shortly afterward a high German officer came in with his staff. He was a stout and well-built man of middle age or over, typically German in his general characteristics, but not half-bad looking. His uniform was covered with braid and medals. Everyone paid him the utmost deference. He stopped in the middle of the room. Are there any Canadians here? I stepped forward. Yes, sir. I mean the Prince's Patricia Canadians. Yes, sir, I am. And here's some more of them. And I pointed at the prostrate figures of my companions. Were they sprawled on the flagstones? Princess Patricia's regiment. Yes, sir. Well, the Princess Patricia is my niece. Often nice girl. I hope it won't be long before I see her again. I grin. Well, I hope it won't be long before I see her too, sir. The other fellows joined us. The straw and smell of it still sticking to their clothes as they formed a little knot about the Prince and his staff. The scene was incongruous. The smart uniforms of the immaculately kept staff officers contrasting strangely with our own unkept foulness. We occupied the center of the stage. Around us were grouped the men of our sister regiments, most of them lying on the floor in the dazed condition. There were few who came forward to listen. They were too tired, and to them at least this was merely an incident. One of a thousand more important ones. Odd parts of clothing hung on the ornate images and decorations of the room. A German rifle hung by its sling from the patient neck of a life-sized savior. While further over, the vermin infested shirt of a Britisher hung over the rounded breasts of a brooding Madonna with the infant inner lap. At the door a small group of guards stood stiffly to a painful attention and continued to do so whilst royalty touched them with the shadow of its wings. The Prince questioned us further, and I told him that I had been in a guard of honor to the Princess when she had been a child and when her father, the Duke of Condott, had been the General Officer commanding at Aldershot. He laughed back at us and was altogether very friendly. You'll go to a good camp and you'll be all right, if you behave yourselves. Sharp shoved his ore in here, rousing in good British soldier fashion. I don't call it very good treatment when they steal the overcoats from wounded men. Who did that? He was all steel and I saw a change come over the officers of the staff. The chaps who took us prisoners, said Sharp, what regiment were they? The Prince glanced at an aide who hastily drew out a notebook and began to take down our replies. The 21st Prussian, sir. Do you know the men? Their faces, but not their names. Of what rank was the officer in charge? We did not know but thought him a company officer of the rank of Captain, perhaps. He asked for other particulars which we gave to the best of our knowledge. I'll attend to that, he said. However, we heard no more of it. We refrained from complaining about the actual ill treatment and indignities we had been subjected to, the murder of our unoffending comrades or the lack of attention to our wounds, as we rightly judged that we should only have earned the eminente of our guards. May I have your cap, badge? The Prince asked, decently enough. I lied brazenly. Sorry, sir, I've lost mine. The fact was I had shoved it down under my patiss while lying back of the trench the previous afternoon. Sheriff says, you can have mine, sir. He took it. Thanks so much. He glanced at the aid again, rather sharply this time, I thought. The latter blushed and hastily extracted a wallet, from which he handed Sheriff a two-mark piece, equal to one and ten pence, or forty-four cents. He gave us his name before leaving, and my recollect can is, that it was something like Edelbert. Evidently he was a brother of the Duchess of Connaught, whom we knew to have been a German princess, whose brothers and other male relatives all enjoyed high commands among our foes. End of Chapter 8. Chapter 9 of The Escape of a Princess Pat. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Vendetti, MikeVendetti.com. The Escape of a Princess Pat by George Pearson, Chapter 9. How the German Red Cross Tended the Canadian Wounded. Come out, Canadians, the crucifixion. Nicks, nicks, civilian hate. Englander is fine. We remained in the Fowl Church all of that day and night, and until the following morning. No more food appeared. We were marched down to the railroad under heavy escort, crowded into freight cars and locked in. The guards were distributed in cars of their own, alternating with ours. Our wounds remained unattended too. At every station they thundered, come out, Canadians. They lined us up in a row, while a staff officer put the same questions to us in nearly every case. They were particularly interested in the quality of our rations and asked if it was not true that we were starving, and if our pay had not been stopped. The guards invariably explained to the civilians that these were the Canadians who had cut the throats of the German wounded. We did not know how to explain the prevalence of this impression. On the contrary, we were aware of the story of the crucifixion of three of the Canadian Division during your preys. The tale had come smoking hot to our men in the polygon woods trenches during the great battle. It gave in great detail all the salient facts, which were that, after recapturing certain lost positions, the man of a certain regiment had discovered the body of one of their sergeants, together with those of two privates crucified on the doors of a cow shed and a barn. German bayonets had been driven through their hands and feet, and their contorted faces gave every appearance of having died in great agony. The story was and is generally believed throughout all ranks of the Canadian Army. For its truth, I cannot pouch. We knew that our own men had never mistreated any prisoners, and had in fact usually done quite the reverse. How far are the regiments may have gone in retaliation for what was known as the crucifixion is impossible to say, that prisoners may have been killed as possible for such things become an integral part of war once the enemy has so offended. But we could not believe that there had been any cutting of throats as would imply a sheer cold bloodedness, that we could not stomach. The mob surged around and reviled us, while the guards in high good humour translated the remarks unless as was frequently the case, they were made to the officials in English for our benefit. The other British soldiers were left in their cars. Our wounded were getting very badly off by this time. It was impossible to avoid trampling on one another as the car was very dark at best, and the one small window in the roof was closed as soon as we drew in a station. When taken out we were under heavy escort, and were allowed no opportunity to clean up the accumulated filth of the car. We suffered terribly for food and water, and some of the wounds began to turn. So what with exhaustion and all, we grew very weak. At one station the guards took us out and made us line up to watch them eat of a hearty rip-ast which the Red Cross women had just brought them, and we were very hungry. When we too asked for food they said, Nicks, Nicks! The crowds met us at every station and included women of all classes who called us Englender Schwein, and who at no time gave us the slightest assistance, but instead devoted themselves to the guard. Other men told us later that Red Cross women had spit under drinking water and in their food. There was no opportunity for this in our case, as we did not receive any of either. We did not receive any food during this trip, which lasted from the morning of one day until the night of the next. We had gone since the day of our capture on the coffee received at headquarters in Polygon Wood, and the single issue of bread, water, and bacon received in the church, the letter of which we could not eat, a total of three days and nights on that one issue of rations. We pulled into Gison at 11, the night of May 10. The citizens made a Roman holiday of the occasion, and the entire population turned out to see the Englender Schwein. There was a guard for every prisoner and two lines of fixed bayonets. The mob surged around, heaping on us insults and blows, particularly the women, with hate in their eyes they spit on us. We had to take that or the bayonet. These were the acts not only of the rabble, but also of the people of good appearance and address. One very well-dressed woman rushed up. Under other circumstances I should have judged her to have been a gentle woman. She shrieked in victives at us as she forced her way through the crowd. Fine! She screamed and struck the man next to me. He snapped his shoulders back as a soldier does in attention. Then, drawing deep from the very bottom of her lungs, she spit the mass full in his face. The muscles of his face twitched painfully, but he held his eyes to the front and stared past his tormentor, seeing other things. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 The Escape of a Princess Pat by George Pearson This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Vendetti mikevendetti.com The curious concoctions of the chef at Giesen We had a mile and a half to march to the prison camp. Those who were past walking were put in street cars and sent to the logger, where upon our arrival we were shoved into huts for the night, supperless of course. This was our introduction to the prison camp of Giesen. The next morning we each received three-quarters of a pint of acorn coffee, so-called horrible tasting stuff, and a loaf of black bread, half potatoes and half rye, weighing 250 grams or a little more than half a pound. Among five men, this allowed a piece about three by three by four inches to each man for a the daily ration. The coffee consisted of acorns and four pounds of burned barley, boiled in 100 gallons of water. There was no sugar or milk. My curiosity led me to get this and other recipes from the fat French cook. All that day and for several following, official and guards were busy numbering and renumbering us and assigning us to our companies. They were hopelessly German about it, and did it so many times and very thoroughly. There were twelve thousand men in the camp and eight hundred in the logger. The majority were Russian and French, with a very sprinkling of Belgians. There were perhaps six hundred British in the entire camp. The various nationalities were mixed up and each section given a hut, very similar to those American and British troops occupy in their own countries. A number of smaller camps in the neighboring districts were governed from this central one. For dinner we had shadow soup, so named for obvious reasons. The recipe in my diary reads, For eight hundred men, two hundred gallons of water, one small bag of potatoes, and one packet of herbs. To make matters worse, the vegetables issued in this camp were in a decayed condition and continued to come to us so. Another staple dinner ration was ham soup. This was the usual two hundred gallons of water boiled with ten pounds of ham rinds, ten pounds of cabbage, and twenty pounds of potato. The ham rind had hair on it, but we used to fish for it at and considered ourselves lucky to get a piece. Oatmeal soup, another meal, consisted of two hundred gallons of water, two pounds of current, and fifty pounds of oatmeal, chestnut soup, two hundred gallons of water, one hundred pounds of whole chestnuts, and ten pounds of potatoes. It was a horrible concoction and my daily diary has. To be served hot and thrown out. Meat soup was two hundred gallons of water, ten pounds of meat, one small bag of potatoes, and ten pounds of vegetables. This was the most nutritious of the lot. Unfortunately for us, the small portion of meat and most of the potatoes were given to the French, both because the cook and all his assistants were Frenchmen and because the authorities wielded so. This was usually managed without any apparent of fairness to the British first and the French last, with the result that one received a tin full of hot water that was too weak to run out, while the Frenchmen's spoons stood at the tension in their thicker mess they found in the bottom. This, with other things, contributed to make bad blood between the two races. A great show was made of stirring up the mess, but it was a pure farce. Rice soup consisted of two hundred gallons of water, fifty pounds of rice, twenty pounds of potatoes, and one pound of current. Bean soup, two hundred gallons of water, fifty pounds of beans, and twenty pounds of potatoes. Pork soup, two hundred gallons of water, ten pounds of pork, and fifty pounds of potatoes. Porridge was made of two hundred gallons of water, fifteen pounds of oatmeal, and two pounds of barley. The diary states to be served hot as a drink. Once in two months a ration of sausage was dished out. For breakfast, once a week there was one pint of acorn coffee without sugar or milk, and one and a half square inches of Limburger cheese. To quote from the diary, before serving, open all windows and doors, then send for the Russians to take it away. The Germans discriminated against the British prisoners. When there was any disagreeable duty, the cry went up for Deringlander. The much sought-for cookhouse jobs all went to the French, who waxed fat in consequence. No Britisher was ever allowed near the cookhouse. The French hired, for the most part, been there for some time, and their country lying so close by. They were receiving parcels. We were not, and this made the food problem a very serious one for us. Their supplies were received through Switzerland, which was the one anchor to Windward, for so many of us, and this and other respects. At first, the French used to give us a certain amount of their own food, but eventually ceased to do so. Most of them worked down in the town daily, and could square the guard long enough to buy tobacco at twenty-five finnings, or two and a half pence a package, which they sold to us later for eighty finnings, until we got on to their profiteering. CHAPTER XI THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT by George Pearson This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com. CHAPTER XI. THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GEESON Except for the starving, as I look back now. Geeson was not such a bad camp as such places go. At least it was the best that we were to know. The discipline, of course, was fairly severe, but on the other hand the commandant did not trouble us a great deal. The petty annoyances were harder to endure. Frequently we would get the ROSE! at half-hour intervals by day or night. ROSE OUT! ROSE IN! and so on. We never knew what our tormentors wanted, but supposed it to be a sympathetic attempt to break our spirit and our nerves by the simple expedient of habitually interfering with our sleep so that we would become like the Russians. They were mostly utterly broken in spirit and had the air of beaten dogs so that they cringed and fond to their masters. The least punishment needed out for the most trifling offense was three days' cells. Some got ten years for refusing to work in munition and steel factories, particularly British and Canadians. There are large numbers of both who are today serving out sentences of from 18 months to 10 years in the military fortresses of Germany under circumstances of the greatest cruelty. The so-called Quartz Martial were mockeries of trials. The culprit was simply marched up to the orderly room, received his sentence, and marched away again. He was allowed no defense worthy of the name. Some of the King's own Yorkshire light infantry were warned for work in ammunition's factory. When the time came around they were taken away but refused to work and so they were knocked about quite a bit. One was shot in the leg and another bayoneted to the hip. And all were sent back to camp where they were awarded six weeks in the punishment camp, known as the Strafe Barracks. This was a long hut, which were two rows of stools a few paces apart. The Rouse blew the culprits at five thirty. At six they were marched to the hut and made to sit down in two rows facing one another. At attention, that is, body rigid, head thrown well back, chest out, hands held stiffly at the side and eyes straight to the front for two hours. Meanwhile the centuries marched up and down the lane watching for any relaxation or levity. If so much as a face was pulled at a twinking eye across the way, another's day strafing was added to the penalty. At the end of two hours one's hour's rest was allowed, during which the prisoners could walk about in the hut but could not lie down. This continued all day until lights out for six weeks. No mail parcels, writing or exercise what permitted, the prisoners during that time, and the already scanty rations were cut. During good behavior we were allowed two postcards and two letters a month with nine lines to the former and thirteen to the page of the letter. No more, no less. Each letter had four pages of the small, private letter size. The name and address counted as a line. Mine was Friggen's Fingler Haager, Kapkei number six, Barrick number A. The writing had to be big and easy to read and in the letters on four sides of the paper. No complaint or discussion of the war was permitted. Fully one half of those written were returned for infringements or fancied ones. Of these rules sometimes when the censor was irritated they were merely chucked into the fire and as they had also to pass the English censor it was no wonder that many families wondered why their men did not write. We were there for three months before our parcels began to arrive. We considered ourselves lucky if we received six out of ten cent and with half the contents of the six intact. In the larger camp the chances of receipt were better. The small camps were merely units attached to and governed by the larger ones which handled the mail before giving it to the authorities at the smaller ones. Thus a man who was attached to Griesen Camp, although perhaps one hundred miles away from it, had to submit to the additional delay and chance of loss and theft included in this censoring of the parcel at Giesen as well as the actual place of his confinement. This doubled the chances of fault finding and of theft. Knowing this to be true, I most earnestly recommended the sending of parcels true. A large proportion of them were not received but those that are represented the one salvation of the prisoner of war in German hands. So terribly true is this that when we began to receive parcels at irregular intervals we used regularly to acknowledge to our friends the receipt of parcels which we had never received. This was the low cunning developed by our treatment. If advised that a parcel of tea, sugar or other luxuries had been sent and it did not appear after weeks of patient waiting we knew that we should never see the parcel. Nevertheless we usually wrote and thanked the donor and acknowledged receipt, fearful otherwise that he or she would say what's the use and send it no more and we were not allowed to tell the truth that it had been stolen. The first three months of our stay at Giesen were probably the worst of all including as they did the transition period to this life. It seemed than a hell on earth. The slow starvation was the worst. Once in desperation I gave a Frenchman my good boots for his old ones and two and a half marks and then gave sixty fennings of this to the French cook for bread ration. Again in going down the hut one day I spied a flat French loaf cut into four pieces drying on the window sill. Ceasing one piece I tucked it under my tunic and passed on before the loss was discovered. Some of the British could be seen at times picking over the sour refuse in the barrels. This amused the Germans very much. We endeavored to get cookhouse jobs for the pickings to be had but could not do so. At a later date when the Canadian Red Cross lady Fakour Miss Hamilton Gault and our families were sending us package regularly we made all right. Some English societies were in the habit of sending books, music, and games to prisoners but none of these ever reached the group with whom I associated. Even before our later actions put us quite beyond the German pale. The appeal of Seesmit and the Irish Brigade was made to us. A number of prisoners were taken apart and the matter breached privately to them. Pamphlets on the feeding of Ireland were also distributed. I did not see any one go over and an Irishman who was detailed with another Canadian of myself on a brickyard fatigue said that they had recruited only forty in the camp. The whole thing turned out to be a failure. There were twelve of us all hold on the brickyard job. Three or four shoveled clay into the mixing machine. Two more filled the little car which two others pushed along the track of the narrow gauge railroad. We were guarded by four civilian Germans of some home defense corps, all of whom labored with us. The two trammers used to start the car, hop on the brake behind, and let it run off on its own momentum down the incline to the edge of the bank where it would be checked for dumping. Sometimes we forgot to break the car so that it would ricochet on the flying leap off the end of the track and so over the dump. The guards would rage and swear but could prove nothing so long as our fellows did not get too raw and do this too frequently. One day we shovelers decided to add the gaiety of nations. While one attended the guard's attention elsewhere we slipped a chunk of steel into the mess. There was a grinding crash and a large cogwheel tore its way through the roof. In a moment the air was full of machinery and German words. It was a proper wreck. The guards ran around gesticulating, angrily tearing at their hair and threatening us. While we endeavored to look surprised, it is reasonable to suppose that we were unsuccessful, for we will hustle back to the camp and do five-day cells each from the commandant. There was no trial. He merely sentenced us. The United States Ambassador, Gerald, only came to Giesen once in my time there. And that was while I was off at one of the detached camps so I had no opportunity of observing the result. We knew very little of what was going on in the outside world. The guards were not allowed to converse with us and if one was known to speak English he was removed, however they were more or less curious about us. So that a certain amount of clandestine conversation occurred. Some were certain that they were going to win the war. Others said, England has too much money. Germany will never win. They used frequently to gather the Russians, Belgians, and French together and lecture them on England's sins. They said that England was letting them do all the fighting, bleeding them white of their men and treasures so as to come out at the end of the war with the balance of power necessary for her plan of threatening Constantinople and the Sinek ports of France. Many were convinced and this did not add to the pleasantness of our lot. The notorious Continental Times was circled amongst us freely in both French and English editions. It regularly gave us a most appalling list of German victories and it's speculated in abuse of the English. We counted up in one month a total of two million prisoners captured by the Germans on all fronts. As I have said, Giesen was not the best camp of all, bearing the starvation, but the discipline there was merciless. The lager was enclosed by a high-wire fence which we were forbidden to approach within four feet up. A Russian sergeant overstepped at Mark one day to shout something to a friend in an adjoining lager. The sensory shouted at him. He either failed to hear or did not understand. The sensory killed him without hesitation. A Belgian started over one day with some leftover soup which he proposed giving to the Russians. The sensory would not let him pass. He went back and told his mate. The latter a kind little fellow, thinking that the sensory did not understand the nature of the mission, decided to try himself. The sensory stopped him. He attempted to argue. The sensory pushed him roughly back. He struck the German. The latter dropped him with a blow on the head and while he lay unconscious, shoved a bayonet into him. It was done quite coolly and methodically without heat. He was promoted for it. We were told that he had done a good thing and that we should get the same if we did not behave. A Canadian who was forced to work in a munitions plant and whose task included the replacing of waste in the wheel boxes of cars enjoyed himself for a while lifting the greasy waste out of them placing it with sand. He got ten years for that. The German in charge of our loggers stated the Verne de Mont Anglander and lost no opportunity of bulldozing and threatening us. One of the Canadians who had been in American Navy was unusually truculent. The German purposely blunted him one day. Don't do that again. The German repeated the act. The sailor jolted him on the jaw so that he went dreamland for fifteen minutes. The prisoner was taken to the guard room and we never heard his ultimate fate but at the ruling rate he was lucky if he got off at ten years. It is men like this to whom our government and people owe such a debt as may be paid only in a small degree by our insistence after the war that they be given their liberty. A greater glory is theirs than of the soldier. They wrought amongst a world of foes knowing their certain punishment but daring it rather than assist the foes' efforts against their country. One day we were told that we must be inoculated in the arm against typhoid. We thought nothing of that but the next day men began to gather in groups so that the guards shouted roughly at them, bidding them not to mutter and whisper so. Where the word came from I know not. It may have emanated in the fears of some active imagination on the chance and truthful word of a guard, flung in derision at some desperate man or in a kinder mood and in mourning. The word was that we were to be inoculated with the germs of consumption. I understand that it appeared also in the papers at home. It seemed horrible beyond words to us. The idea appeared crazy but was equally on a par with the events we witness daily. Myself I planned to take no chances if it were humanly possible. We were all ordered to parade for the inoculation. I hid myself with a few others and so escaped the operation. Nothing was said so I could only suppose that they had failed to check us up as it was not in keeping with the German character as we had come to know it and to miss an opportunity of corrective punishment even though the inoculation had been for our own good. It is true that some of the men so inoculated fell prey to consumption. On the other hand, one of them had a well-defined case of it before and it was almost certain that the living conditions prevailing amongst us would inspire the appearance of the disease so that we had no proof that any man was so inoculated. Some of the men so affected went to Switzerland for the benefit of the mountaineer through an arrangement made by the Red Cross with Swiss authorities. One of our guards was subject to fits and habitually ran a muck amongst us abusing some of the prisoners in a painful fashion. We made complaint of this through the proper channels for which crime the officer-in-charge stopped our fires and other privileges for the time being. Most of the men wore prison uniforms or some cases suits sent from England which were altered by the authorities to conform to their regulations. These required that if one was not in a distinctive and enemy uniform that broad stripes of bright-colored cloth be set into the seam of the trousers, not sewed in, but into the goods, a large diamond-shaped piece or else a square of such cloth was set into the breast and back of the tunic. I preferred my uniform, dilapidated though it was. We were permitted the choice. Probably less out of kindness than because of the saving involved. There was a big, simple giant of a Russian here who was badly sprung at the knees. He had been forced to work during the winter in an underground railway station near Berlin. He had had no shoes and had stood in the water for weeks, digging. He was very badly crippled in the consequence. Some four hundred Russians came to us after the fall of Warsaw. They were mostly wounded and all run. On a three-month march to Giesin the wounded had received absolutely no attention other than their own. Here we had a crazy German doctor, a mediocre French one, and Canadian orderlies. If an Englishman went to the hospital for treatment it was, Vic, get out. These Russians were treated similarly. The French fared better. One big, fine-looking Russian with a filthy mass of rags wound around his arm reported for attention. They unwound the rag and his arm dropped off. He died with five others that afternoon and God only knows how many more on the trip they had just finished. They were buried in a piano case together. Usually they were placed in packing cases. We asked for a flag which to cover them as soldiers should be. They asked what that was for and there it ended. They were all thoroughly cowed as our dogs when they have been ill-treated and they jumped to it when the Germans spoke, accepting two of their officers, who refused to take down their epaulets when ordered to do so. We did not learn how they fared. These were the only captive officers of any nationality whom we saw. We became sick of the sight of one another as even the best of friends do under such abnormal conditions. For a variety I often walked around the enclosure with the Russian. Neither of us had the faintest idea of what the other said, but it was a change. The monotony of the wire was terrible, and just outside it in the lane formed by the encircling set of wire, the dogs with their tongues out, walked back and forth, eyeing us. There was so little to talk about, we knew nothing and could only speculate on the outcome of the commonest events which came to us on the tongue of rumour or arose out of our own sad thoughts. The authorities were not satisfied with our recognition or lack of it. Of their officers and took us out to practice saluting drill, a thing always detested by soldiers, especially veterans. The idea was to make us salute visiting German officers properly, in the German fashion and not in our own. There is consisted of saluting with the right hand only, with their left held stiffly straight at the side, while our was to salute with the hand furthest from the officer, giving eyes left or eyes right, as the case might be, and with the free hand swinging loosely with the stride, so a school of us was led out to this. The very atmosphere was tense with sullen rebellion. The guards eyed us as scants. The officer stood at the left, awaiting us. Beyond him, on the other side of the road, a post. An Oval Officer ordered us to march by, one by one, to give the Herr Officer, Augenlings, in the German fashion, and to the post, which represented another officer, an Augenreich, when we should come to it. I'll see him in hell first. I muttered to the man next to me. I was in the lead of the party. I shook with excitement and fear of I know not what. As the command rang out, I stepped out with a swing, and with the action, decision came to me. As I approached the officer, he drew up slightly, and looked at me expectantly. I gave him a stony stare and passed on. A few more steps, and I reached the post. I pulled back my show-holders, with a smart jerk, got my arms to swinging freely, snapped my head around so that my eyes cut the post squarely, and swung my left hand up in a clean cut paroble to eyes right in good old regimental order. A half-dozen-shocked centuries came up on the double. It was they who were excited now. I was master of myself and the situation. The Inter-Roll Officer ordered me to repeat and salute. I did so literally. The officer was, to all outward appearances, the only other person there who remained unmoved. My adore had cooled by this time, and his very silence seemed worse than the threats of the guard. Nor was I exactly in love with my self-appointed task. Nevertheless, I saw my mates watching me and inwardly applauding. I was ashamed to quit. I did it again.