BY AN EXCHANGED OFFICER WITH ILLUSTRATIONS   William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London 1916 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS. ILLUSTRATIONS. Wounded and a Prisoner of War. Already on the shore side the skyline showed oddly-shaped shadows growing grey in the first movement of dawn. From the quay a single lamp threw its scarce light on the careful evolutions of the ship, and from the darkness beyond a voice roared in the still night instructing the pilot with inappropriate oaths and words not kn

" From the Camp before Mons , September 26 . Comrade, I received yours and am glad yourself and your wife are in good health.... Our battalion suffered more than I could wish in the action.... I have received a very bad shot in the head myself, but am in hopes, and please God, I shall recover. I will not pretend to give you an account of the battle, knowing you have better in the prints.... Your assured friend and comrade, John Hull." Quoted in the Tatler , Oct. 29, 1709. The war of 1914 is in m

My knowledge of subsequent events is based partly on information obtained from Private, now Sergeant, R. Sinclair, who was next me in the trench, and at once bandaged up my head with his emergency field-dressing. It was still day when I came back to life. My first consciousness was of intolerable cramp in the legs. When Sinclair saw that I was breathing, he laid me down on the straw at the bottom of the trench and tried to give me a drink out of my water-bottle. I was unable to move any part of

What had happened in the meantime to the battalion which had marched off in the dark while I lay at the corner of that little wood does not belong to the story, but the adventures of the soldier who sat so long in the night by my side have an indirect bearing on my own history. The following letter was written by Sinclair at Caudry, and posted on his escape from enemy territory:— Caudry, Nord, France. Dear —— ,—This last week has been the worst week I ever put in in my life. Since Sunday morning

"En haut! Montez au numéro sept," shouted a shrill female voice; "c'est un officier, il faut le mettre au numéro sept." And so I became No. 7, Hôpital Civil, Cambrai. My room was a small one on the first floor; the furniture consisted of two beds and two iron stands. The floor was polished, the walls painted a dull brown, the door of iron, with upper panel of glazed glass. It was some time before these surroundings presented themselves to my view. At least forty-eight hours I remained without mu

The school building, hurriedly transformed on the outbreak of war into a hospital, forms three sides of a quadrangle, the fourth side of which is blocked by a high wall, so that in the courtyard thus formed the sun can never shine. This was the hospital of the French Red Cross—L'Hôpital Auxiliaire du Territoire, No. 106, Union des femmes de France. The accommodation for patients is limited to five rooms, all of which look on to the dismal courtyard. "Salle un," to which I was taken on arrival, t

Behind one of the hospital wings there is a tiny garden walled in on all sides by high buildings. Here were some mouldy-looking pear-trees, a ragged gooseberry bush, and a patch of ragged cabbage-stalks. The ground was thickly covered with rotten leaves; in one corner empty broken rabbit-hutches, pieces of broken furniture, broken bottles, and miscellaneous débris gave an additional note of depression. Still it was a change from the dulness of the courtyard, and the garden, such as it was, becam

I had been four months in hospital when my name was put down on the list of "transportables," and a place was reserved for me in the "Zug Lazaret." These trains were made up according to the output from the different hospitals along the front, chiefly from Lille, Douai, Cambrai, and St Quentin. After the pressure of traffic consequent on the rush back from the Marne had subsided, a regular hospital-train service was inaugurated, and trains direct to Munich were run once a week. When I expressed

The day had not long dawned when I awoke so cramped and stiff that I could hardly move, but still refreshed by much-needed sleep, and above all free of the previous night's headache. My sentry, who had also slept well, was good enough to ask how I felt, and said we were going to Aachen, but he could not or would not say if this was to be our ultimate destination. We reached Aachen about 8.30, and a more miserable morning could not be imagined. It had evidently rained hard all night, and the down

I forgot to mention that either at Mons or Charleroi, I am not sure which, a sheet of paper containing all the latest war news, some printed in English and some in French, was handed to all the prisoners on the train. I have kept this interesting document, the heading of which is as follows: "A short account of facts from Official German and Foreign War Reports. 'This english [ sic ] is also published in German and Spanish.' Free of charge from the Publisher, Mrs von Puttkamer, Hamburg, Paulstra

The English Club usually spent the interval between dinner and bed in a game of cards, but on this my first night I was too tired to make a fourth at bridge, and hobbled off to my own quarters under the severe gaze of three unfortunate sentries who had to spend most of the night marching up and down the cold clammy corridor. On arriving at "Room 52" the noisiest game of cards in the world, known as "La Manille," was in full swing, the air was thick with tobacco smoke, and empty bottles of beer s

At 10.30, in answer to a great shouting of "Promenade, Promenade" from room to room, those who wished to go for a walk in the "garden" assembled together at the end of the corridor. The garden entrance was at the far end of the courtyard, and in spite of the moat and the triple lines of battlement, the promenading party always crossed the court under escort. It took me about five minutes to cross the yard. Irvine and Reddy always stayed behind to help me along. We were never allowed to start wit

" Sunday, Jan. 10th. —Mass, 8.30. Snowed a little." M. l'Abbé officiated. Very nearly all the French officers attended Mass. From my room two were either too ill or too lazy, and Granny, who, in the early hours of the morning, was frightened of catching cold, did not appear outside the bedclothes. The officer who used to read at night, at whom boots were thrown every evening on the stroke of ten, declared himself to be a Pagan, and so he also remained in bed. The choir loft of the chapel had bee

"Send me a post-card when you have time," writes a friend from Germany; "letters and post-cards are the only things we live for." And so it was at the Festung Marienberg. Two or three times a week Mr Poerringer would come in with a bundle of letters and call out the names of the lucky ones, the officers all crowding round with eager faces, listening, waiting, hoping. Two officers only sat apart and watched, not without envy. One, a Frenchman from Lille, could never hope to hear from his wife or

Life in the Festung was becoming very hard. Snow had fallen heavily. For several days, owing to alternate frost and snow, the courtyard, whether a mass of slippery ice or of penetrating melting snow, was now a barrier to the garden, across which I dared not venture. The corridor was so intensely cold that it was no place for me to take exercise in. My only relief at this time from lying on a bed was to take a few turns up and down the room during the hour of the promenade, when all windows were

"La guerre est fini pour vous." The van drove slowly down the road which runs along the outer fortification of the Castle. Mr Poerringer did not speak again, and I was silently trying to grasp the reality of the situation. We stopped at the hut hospital barracks where I had been taken on my arrival at Würzburg five weeks before. Mr Poerringer got out and saluted Doctor Zinck, who was waiting outside the gates. The Doctor caught my eye and grinned from ear to ear, behind the back of some other of