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
When I awoke I was lying stark naked upon the floor of my cell. My head
was racking and throbbing like a hammer. Raising my hand to my forehead
I sharply withdrew it. It was quite wet, and as I looked more closely, I
saw that it was blood. I felt again and found my face clotted and my
hair reeking wet from a ragged wound on the head. Evidently the soldier
whose rifle I had seen swinging through the air, had brought it down
heavily upon my skull, felling me like an ox. How long I had lain
unconscious I never knew, but it must have been for some time, judging
from the quantity of blood I had lost, which was partially congealed on
my face, neck and shoulders. I shivered with the cold and collecting my
senses I commenced to dress my wound. For bandages I had to tear my
shirt to ribbons. I swabbed the ragged wound as well as I could, and
then bound it up. Weary and faint from loss of blood I dressed myself
with extreme difficulty and then proceeded to examine my present abode.
We are familiar with the cramped quarters at the Tower of London into
which our mediaeval sovereigns were wont to thrust our ancestors who fell
foul of authority. Wesel Prison is the German counterpart of our famous
quondam fortress-prison. The cells are little, if any, larger than those
in the Tower, and are used to this day. My residence measured about nine
feet in length by about four and a half feet in width, and was
approximately ten feet in height--about the size of the entrance hall in
an average small suburban residence. High up in the wall was a window
some two feet square. But it admitted little or no daylight. It was
heavily barred, while outside was a sloping hood which descended to a
point well below the sill, so that all the light which penetrated into
the cell was reflected from below against the black interior of the
hood. In addition there was a glazed window, filthy dirty, while even
the slight volume of light which it permitted to pass was obstructed
further by small-mesh wire netting. Consequently the interior was
wrapped in a dismal gloom throughout the greater part of the day,
through which one could scarcely discern the floor when standing
upright. After daylight waned the cell was enveloped in Cimmerian
blackness until daybreak, no lights being permitted.
The bed comprised three rough wooden planks, void of all covering and
mattress, and raised a few inches above the floor. The other
appointments were exceedingly meagre, consisting of a small jug and
basin as well as a small sanitary pan. High on the wall was a broken
shelf. That was all. The wall itself was about two feet in thickness and
wrought of masonry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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