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
The Cockney who had been imprisoned for horse-stealing badgered this
superior fellow-prisoner unmercifully. He was incessantly dwelling upon
the man's descent from a position of comfort and ease to "quod" as he
termed it. He would go up to the prisoner, pacing the exercise yard, and
slapping him on the back would yap:
"Now then, old sport! Don't get so down in the mouth about it!"
The prisoner would venture some snappy retort.
"All right, Cocky! Crikey, you'd look mighty fine stuck up against a
wall with half a dozen bloomin' Prussian rifles looking at yer. Blime if
I don't believe you'd dodge the bullets by caving-in at the knees!"
A fierce look would be the response to such torment.
"Gawd's trewth! My fretful bumble-bee, I'd write to old Tight-Whiskers
about it if I was you. Get 'im to come an' bail yer out!"
At first we wondered who the personality so irreverently described as
"Tight-Whiskers" was, but subsequently we were enlightened. He was
referring to Von Tirpitz, "Th' bloke wot looks arter th' Germin Navy!"
When the Cockney, who appeared to be downright proud of his ability to
keep his "pecker up," found banter to be unproductive, he would assume a
tone of extreme sympathetic feeling, but this was so obviously unreal as
to be more productive of laughter than his outspoken sallies.
Once a week there was a sight from which, after my first experience, I
was always glad to escape. On this day the prisoners were taken into the
exercise yard to meet their wives and children. On these occasions when
supplies of food were brought in, some very heart-rending scenes were
witnessed, the little toddlers clinging to their fathers' coat-tails and
childishly urging them to come home, while the women's eyes were wet and
red.
The sanitary arrangements in Klingelputz were on a level with those of
other prisons. Two commodes, with ill-fitting lids, sufficed for ten
men, and in the underground apartment to which we were condemned, and of
which the ventilation was very indifferent, the conditions became
nauseating. To make matters worse the vile prison food precipitated an
epidemic of acute diarrhoea and sickness, so that the atmosphere within
the limited space became so unbearable as to provoke the facetious
Cockney to declare that "'e could cut it with a knife," while he
expressed his resolve "to ask th' gaoler for a nail to drive into it" to
serve as a peg for his clothes! But it was no laughing matter, and we
all grew apprehensive of being stricken down with some fearful malady
brought on simply and purely by the primitive sanitary arrangements.
Only once a day were the utensils subjected to a perfunctory cleansing,
a job which was carried out by the criminals incarcerated in the prison.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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