The Note-Book of an Attaché: Seven Months in the War ZoneWood, Eric Fisher
History
The Note-Book of an Attaché: Seven Months in the War Zone
Wood, Eric Fisher
World War, 1914-1918 -- France -- Paris; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
_Berlin, Thursday, January 21st._ I arrived in Berlin last night after
an uneventful journey. I went to the theatre this evening with Charles
Russell. We walked around through the lobby during the intermission
and among other things saw a young man, perhaps nineteen, very blond,
with the nicest, simplest, most straightforward face, the face of a
quiet, retiring boy, who would grow up into a thinking man. He was
with his mother. He was in civilian clothes, but in his lapel he wore
the broad ribbon--black with two white bars--of the Iron Cross.
Somewhere, sometime in these recent months, this quiet lad had
performed coolly some feat of great personal valor. The look of
unsuppressible pride upon his mother's face, as she walked on his arm,
was wonderful to behold.
* * * * *
_Sunday, January 24th._ I am to leave early Wednesday morning for
London or The Hague, I do not yet know which. From either one it is
probable that I shall be sent to Brussels.
* * * * *
_Tuesday, January 26th._ I visited the prison camp at Döberitz today.
In a military automobile I was conducted there with much ceremony by
Captain Freiherr von G----, Iron Cross and Red Eagle, of the Imperial
Guard. He is on leave convalescing from a wound in the knee which he
received at Ypres. I was expressly told that I might describe what I
saw and repeat what I heard as many times and as much in detail as I
chose, so that I have no hesitation in giving my impressions without
reserve, even though it was by courtesy of the German Government that
I made the trip.
The camp was distant one hour's fast run from Berlin and was situated
on a flat plain which had very little natural or artificial drainage.
The cold mud was everywhere from three to four inches deep. On this
plain and closely surrounded by heavy barbed-wire entanglements were
some seventy or eighty rude wooden sheds arranged in four rows with a
broad avenue down the center. Here were kept some nine thousand
prisoners of war, of whom four thousand were British and four thousand
Russian. By careful and repeated pacing I estimated that the sheds
were about one hundred by thirty feet. Each one had six unopenable
windows on a side. In each such house were quartered one hundred and
twenty-five men. When certain partitioned areas have been subtracted
this means a space of about six by three feet per man. Each house was
heated by one stove and was very hot and stuffy, being, except for the
door, hermetically sealed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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