True Stories of the Great War, Volume 5 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
History
True Stories of the Great War, Volume 5 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Another fact made me terribly despondent, and, fight how I would, was
gradually making me utterly hopeless. About fourteen days after my
companions of the British Relief Committee had gone, a new-comer had
arrived. He spoke German absolutely perfectly, but with an Austrian
accent. I had heard him say something to the warder. I will not tell
his story, for he is at the present moment in another prison in Berlin,
though not in solitary, and is, I know, writing his reminiscences
in readiness for when the war shall come to an end. Let it suffice,
however, to say that he had been discovered, soon after war broke out,
writing articles for a London paper. He was arrested at the flat he
happened to be living in, and, after a large amount of palaver, was
given twenty-four hours to leave the country in. He was accompanied
to the frontier. Within a fortnight he was back again. He had gone
to London, had seen his paper, had come back to Holland, and at the
frontier had pretended to be an Austrian waiter who had been expelled
from England. He so exasperated his interrogators at the frontier
by his eternal repetition of his ill treatment at the hands of his
dastardly English employers, that they finally let him pass. However,
in the end he was caught--as we all are--and recognised. He had been
told that he was to be sent to this place Ruhleben, and, when one day
he disappeared, I naturally surmised that he had been taken there.
He was very good to me, for he had managed to get permission to buy
fruit; I had been refused it. So he used to buy double the quantity,
and daily, on going down the stairs, smuggle me an apple. "If he," I
argued, "who has done this thing _twice_, and who is hoary with old
age (he was about thirty-five), gets sent to this camp Ruhleben, after
being here for three weeks, and I, who have only done it once, and am
not yet of age, and have been here nine weeks, and have not been sent
there, then there is no hope of my ever getting there. They would have
sent me there by now, were they going to do so at all." Afterwards, I
found, of course, that he had never been sent anywhere near Ruhleben,
but simply to another prison. I heard the most wonderful stories about
his doings there, from a friend who was sent to prison for a time. He
would appear for exercise dressed in flamboyant pink running shorts, a
vest and socks to match--and a top hat. What on earth for? Well, if the
walls of prison don't supply you with humour or whimsicality, you must
undertake the task yourself.
The best of luck to him. He probably thinks I am still in that
Polizeigefängnis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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