OR HOW IT FELT TO BE A PRISONER OF WAR By BEN MUSE 36926 Lance-Corporal 11th King’s Royal Rifles Price 50 Cents Copyright , 1919 BY BEN MUSE THE SEEMAN PRINTERY, DURHAM, N. C....

The following narrative tells of the adventures of an American boy in German imprisonment from his capture November 30, 1917, to his release December 9, 1918. The author is a native of Durham, N. C. , and a student of Trinity College, who went over and joined the English forces before America’s entry into the war, serving in the Eleventh King’s Royal Rifles six months and going through the severe fighting around Ypres and Cambrai before his capture....

I was bandaging poor Sergeant Sharpy’s wounds. “It’s all up with us, Muse,” he said. I feared that it was all up with him , at any rate, as I clumsily tried to stop the torrent of blood which was flowing from his head and shoulders. It was after an hour of one of those hells such as only soldiers of the line can understand, when death and suffering were everywhere and survival seemed the rare and lucky exception. The machine gun corporal on my left had died at his gun, and the contorted body of

The journey to our camp in Germany will be remembered by most of my comrades only as a hungry nightmare, interrupted at long intervals by bowls of unsatisfying German soup. Those of us who had enough biscuits to keep from suffering found it an interesting opportunity to see the Germans behind their lines and the life of the French under German rule. The latter were splendid to us. In every town or village through which we passed, they turned out in crowds to do us honor. Girls smiled sympathetic

A prisoner of war camp had many characteristics in common with other communities of human beings. It had its social classes, its great and its humble citizens, its rich and its poor. In arriving in camp I was fortunate enough to meet a friend, a Frenchman, with three years service in captivity and an ample stock of provisions. He “adopted” me. The fate of my eight hundred comrades, however, was pitiful. Finding practically nothing in the Help Committee’s stores and being as yet without help from

The scene on which we gazed through the window was a typical one for a prison camp. The path along the barbed wire formed a sort of wretched promenade along which the sufficiently nourished took their constitutionals. A few English sergeants, two bearded French ajutants , and a group of vivacious young Russian officiers aspirants were pacing monotonously back and forth as one does on board ship. “ Pane! [1] Pane, Kamarad! ” A few Italians had suddenly appeared from across the corner. I was aston

There were two girls on the place, Miga, the farmer’s daughter, and Erna, the milkmaid. The latter, a big, muscular, typically German peasant girl, took it upon herself to be my special guardian and tutor in the art of agriculture, and came to play no less a part in my life than that of my Woman of Destiny and Chief Tormentor. Of course, I had told the Unteroffizier [4] that I could farm—for farming was certainly better than mining or munitions making—but, as a matter of fact, beyond the items t

Sunday came and I was overjoyed to learn that it was observed even in Germany. I was feeding the cows when they told me the good news. I finished feeding them with enough haste to give them three kinds of indigestion and ran over to the next farm to see my mate, Albert, who had come to the village along with me. I located him by the strains of “Carry Me Back to Dear Old Blighty!” played on a mouth harmonica, and coming from the little room adjoining the cow stall. We greeted each other as though

As time went on I grew more adept as a farmer and bolder as my increased efficiency justified. Even Erna ceased to terrorize me. The latter relief dated from one morning in the cow stall when she exasperated me beyond all patience by her sneering denunciation of the “English swine.” I answered her as neatly as I could, but my broken German only seemed to her the funnier, the more excited I became. It reached a climax when she punctuated her argument by poking me in the face with the broom. I str

The one great pastime of the Mecklenburg peasants was arguing about the war with the prisoners. For us, it was impossible to avoid it. We were placed there for the amusement of the natives as well as for toil, and neither the utter ignorance of the subject on the part of the German nor the ignorance of the native tongue on the part of the prisoner furnished any immunity. “ England, nicht gut! ” or “ England kaput! ” [6] was the usual challenge. New prisoners often found their rebuttal limited to

“Oh, Ben, have you seen the papers?” asked Erna one day as I came in for Kaffeetrinken . “Peace has been declared!—Peace!” “ Was? ” I asked, dumbfounded. “Peace! Peace has been declared! The Russians have made peace!” “Oh!” I sighed, my hopes dashed to the ground. “I’ve heard that before.” “ Ja , but it is true,” corroborated Mutter . “It’s real peace! It’s the beginning of the end. It’ll all be settled now in a few weeks! Hostilities on the Eastern Front have ceased. There it is in the paper.”

I was cleaning up in the stable one day when Miga rushed in with a telegram in her hand. “Ben, Ben!” she exclaimed, quaking with excitement. “Karl is coming today!” Who Karl was or what the matter had to do with me I couldn’t imagine. “Where is Warner?” she asked. I told her, and she rushed out to find him. Evidently it was something which everybody had to know. I was interested. I rather liked Miga. She had travelled a bit, and I put her down easily the most intelligent member of the household.

At last one summer’s evening they gathered around the supper table and Ben failed to appear. I would give worlds to have seen the expressions on their faces then, and on the sentry’s later when he came and found no Engländer there to lock up. I had come to seem too permanent there! I was as much an institution on the place as the dog, Telo, or the broken pump. While they were making these rude discoveries I lay crouched on a bed of moss in a secluded dell in one of the grand duke’s forests smoki

The success which I seemed to have with my civilian disguise gradually led me to assume a bolder attitude. I began to stroll nonchalantly along the main roads and even entered public houses and tobacco shops, buying cigars and bottles of beer to drink with my meals. It was this boldness which later caused my downfall. It was the afternoon of the third day and I was resting beside that fateful thoroughfare which runs from the village of Alt Pokrent to the town of Gadebusch, when one of those dazz

I hope I make an unchallenged assertion when I say that it was my first visit inside a civilian jail. It was, at all events, an experience which I do not wish to repeat. At first I worried through a few hours examining the pictures and names carved on the walls. This exciting pastime exhausted, I divided the remaining time between singing and reading the old German Bible, which I found on the shelf, beginning with first chapter of Genesis. My singing, too, was restricted to a sotto voce the seco

My new custodian was a fat, easy-going German, whom I found possessed some of the most radical of revolutionary ideas, but like a vast number of his comrades, too apathetic to trouble about carrying them out. We passed a little display of wealth in the form of a smartly dressed gentleman, lady, child and poodle dog, strolling down the street. “They’re the bandits!” said my guard, nudging me. “They eat the butter and eggs. We have to fight on dry bread and potatoes!” It was through him, too, that

In the future annals of the war, one Acting Sergeant Major, Alexander Schröder, chief of III Kompanie , Parchim Gefangenenlager , better known to the Englishmen as “Mad Alek,” deserves a large but ignominious chapter. His ludicrous air of blood-curdling bravado and his childish efforts to play the role of the Chocolate Soldier make him as laughable as his brutish cruelties made him an object of dread and hate to the thousands of prisoners who passed through his hands. We runaways, nine in number

I will detain you little with my life on my second German farm, for I was sent to a different one. One coincidence should be noted, however, the lady for whom I now worked had a brother in England, captured near Cambrai in the same battle in which I fell into German hands! This did not alter her attitude toward me, and my treatment here was worse than on the first farm. My sentence of seven days’ arrest was to consist of seven consecutive Sundays of confinement in my room, in the attic, without

A fortnight later found us in Warnemünde, awaiting embarkation. We were quartered in the luxurious Naval Flying Corps Barracks, and living on the fat of the land, but chafing and impatient for the old “Blighty” ship. The natives of Warnemünde were obsequiously polite to the Engländer now. I was returning one evening to the Flugplatz when I was overtaken by a kindly-looking old lady. “ Guten Abend, Junger ,” she said, smiling pleasantly. “They say you’re leaving tomorrow. I suppose you’re glad yo