Antwerp to Gallipoli: A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind ThemRuhl, Arthur
History
Antwerp to Gallipoli: A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them
Ruhl, Arthur
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
The stables were crowded with bunks and men--like a cattleship
forecastle. One young man, fulfilling doubtless his English ritual of
"dressing for dinner," was punctiliously shaving, although it was now
practically dark; in another corner the devotee of some system of how to
get strong and how to stay so, stripped to the skin, was slowly and with
solemn precision raising and lowering a pair of light dumb-bells. Some
saluted as private soldiers would; some bowed almost as to a friend,
with a cheery "Guten Abend, Herr Baron!" There seemed, indeed, to be a
very pleasant relation between this gentleman soldier and his gentlemen
prisoners, and the camp-captain, lagging behind, told how one evening
when they had sung "Elijah," the men had stood up and given three
English cheers for the commandant, while his wife, who had come to hear
the performance, stood beside him laughing and wiping her eyes.
As you get closer to war you more frequently run across such things. The
fighting men kill ruthlessly, because that, they think, is the way to
get their business over. But for the most part they kill without hate.
For that, in its noisier and more acrid forms you must go back to the
men who are not fighting, to the overdriven and underexercised
journalists, sizzling and thundering in their swivel-chairs.
The dimly lit hall under the grand stand was already crowded as we were
led to our seats on a rostrum facing the stage with the commandant and
one of his officers. There was a red draw curtain, footlights made with
candles and biscuit tins, and so strung on a wire that at a pull,
between the acts, they could be turned on the spectators. A programme
had been printed on the camp mimeograph, the camp orchestra was tuning
up, and a special overture had been composed by a young gentleman with
the beautiful name of "Quentin Morvaren."
You will doubtless recall Mr. Shaw's comedy, and the characteristic
"realistic" fun he has with his Romans and Christian martyrs, and the
lion who, remembering the mild-mannered Androcles, who had once pulled a
sliver from his foot, danced out of the arena with him instead of eating
him. And you can imagine the peculiarly piquant eloquence given to the
dialogue between Mr. Shaw's meek but witty Christians and their
might-is-right Roman captors, spoken by British prisoners in the spring
of 1915, in a German prison camp before a German commandant sitting up
like a statue with his hands on his sword!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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