Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons: Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, RuhlebenTalbot, Frederick Arthur Ambrose
History
Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons: Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben
Talbot, Frederick Arthur Ambrose
World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons
During the day we were permitted to stretch our limbs in the exercise
yard for about fifteen minutes. No steel-bound rules and regulations
such as I had experienced at Wesel prevailed here. We were free to
intermingle and to converse as we pleased. This relaxation was keenly
anticipated and enjoyed because it gave us the opportunity to exchange
reminiscences. We learned enough during this brief period to provide
material for further topics of conversation. This, however, was the
experience of our party. Others fared worse and were shut up in single
cells in which, as I had previously done at Wesel, they were compelled
to pace.
We only shared the large underground cell together at night because of
its sleeping accommodation. We were shut in separate cells during the
day, which prevented interchange of conversation and inter-amusement
during the day except in the exercise yard. But solitary confinement was
rare, and in the majority of cases we learned that the aliens were
placed in small parties of four or five in a single cell. After a few
days our party was swelled by five new arrivals from different parts of
Germany. We were a cosmopolitan crowd, comprising every strata of
society, from wealthy men down to stable lads. One boisterous spirit, a
Cockney, confessed far and wide that he had once suffered imprisonment
at home for horse-stealing, and he did not care a rap for anything or
anybody. He was always bubbling over with exuberant merriment and was
one of those who can project every situation into its relative humorous
perspective. Another prisoner was an Englishman who had been resident in
Germany for twenty-five years, and at the time of his arrest occupied a
very prominent position in one of the foremost banking institutions.
This man felt his humiliation acutely. He paced his cell from morning to
night, peevish and nervous, brooding deeply over what he considered to
be an atrocity. He was a well-known man and on intimate terms with many
of the foremost members of the Government and of the Services. He wrote
to every man whom he thought capable of exerting powerful and
irresistible influence upon his behalf, but without any tangible
results. The fact that this man, apparently more Teuton, from his long
residence and associations in the country, than British, had been thrown
into prison brought home to us the thorough manner in which the Germans
carried out their task of placing all aliens in safety. It was
immaterial how prominent the position of the Britisher, his wealth, or
his indispensability to the concern with which he was identified. Into
prison he went when the general rounding up of enemies order was
promulgated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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