title="[17]"/>The commandant, who, together with the vast majority of Germans, believed in a great German victory over the whole world in 1914, began his career as our chief gaoler as an autocrat of the Prussian type. Various objectionable things were done by his orders. Not the least objectionable of these was the stopping of smoking, when Major Vandeleur escaped in December 1914. After a fortnight we regained our tobacco and were allowed to smoke until a similar episode occurred, when the same penalty was imposed.

Sometime in the Spring of 1915, three French officers attempted to escape, but at the last minute, having already gained the outside of the camp, came back into the prison, and in so doing were fired upon by a German sentry who saw them. As the names of these officers were not known to the German authorities, they ordered a roll-call and demanded their names from the senior French officer. Naturally the request was not granted, so the commandant said that all smoking would be stopped for all officers of the camp, unless the names were forthcoming at once. Again he was disappointed, and the tobacco was once more collected. This time most of the parcels of tobacco were filled with lumps of coal and other unimportant trifles, while we smoked, like schoolboys, on the sly. Up the chimney was the favourite place for this.

During the summer of 1915 the commandant changed his tone a bit, and steadily improved from that time forward. Eventually there arrived a time when we could consider him a fair and just commandant, and although no friend of England or the English, he managed to get on very well with his English prisoners.

The French, however, were never able to satisfy their consciences on the subject sufficiently to look upon him as anything but one of the worst. This was too severe. The commandant complained that when he passed them, they would turn their backs on him, in order to avoid having to salute him.

Relations between the English and the allies were always of the best. About half the English preferred the Russians, while the other half preferred the French.

There were many amusing incidents constantly occurring, if one could raise sufficient sense of humour to enjoy them.

One typical example of the way in which we got some amusement out of our guards happened one morning when a German fatigue party was in the barracks loading up a wagon. One of the men had taken off his uniform cap and hung it up by the entrance to one of the buildings. Along came a certain English officer, interested in anything which might assist him to escape, saw the cap, snatched it up and hid it inside his coat, while passing into the building.

Ten minutes or so later, the work being finished, the German soldier looked round for his cap. Meanwhile, the story of the annexation of the cap had gone the round of the prison, so, when the wretched Boche passed along the front of the building with his bald pate shining in the sunlight, he had to run the gauntlet of a crowd of heads peering from all the windows and roaring with laughter at him.

For a long time, I, like the majority of Englishmen, was in a room half-English, half-French. We really got on very well together, but the usual rock upon which French and English split, cropped up in our case. We English wanted a fair proportion of the windows open; the French on the other hand wanted them shut, complaining of "les courants d'air mortels" (draughts).

A compromise was the only possible solution of this universal trouble. On one occasion our allied friends received a consignment of live snails from France, which they proceeded to cook with garlic on a small spirit stove in our room. The smell was appalling. I had to bolt from the room, although I am not over particular. The odour of snails hung about for days afterwards.

These same friends of ours took up fret-sawing as a hobby. Have you ever tried to live in a room in which five or six fret-saws are working for hours at a time? They used to commence work before breakfast sometimes. However, we stuck it without complaining for months.

We had a most extraordinary prison companion, in the person of a Russian, who received the nick-name of "Cuckoo." This Russian was not really an officer at all, but during the great Russian retreat from Poland was a transport driver. Finding, or otherwise coming by, an officer's great-coat, he was dressed in it, when taken prisoner with many thousands of others. The Germans, who were not able to prove whether all officers were genuine, naturally concluded that he was one, and took him to an officers' internment camp in Germany. During his wanderings from camp to camp, he one day came to Crefeld. The Cuckoo grew his hair long, abnormally long, so that it fell in a matted mass, reaching to his shoulders. It was said that he had vowed never to cut his hair until the Germans had been kicked out of his village. He was called the Cuckoo, because when one day he had climbed a tree he was asked what he was doing by some officer, and replied that he was a cuckoo. This extraordinary person was not allowed to feed with the Russian officers, as they objected to having him with them. So he had to have his meals between the two services, which were normally within an hour of each other. The English officers belonging to the first service were always late in leaving the table, and so were frequently in the large dining-room when the Cuckoo was fed. It was a sight never to be forgotten. His manner of eating was truly marvellous.

On some occasions dried smoked fish were part of the meals, and the Cuckoo would pounce on these like a vulture and gnaw one, holding it by the head and tail with both hands. This was not his only stunt. Another good one was the way in which he shovelled food down. His hands worked absolutely feverishly to supply his insatiable appetite; great gulps of tea were rapidly interspersed, for lubricating purposes, I suppose. For all that, I can say that I saw him at the bath, which is more than can be said for all the prisoners in the camp.

A really plucky, but at the same time comic attempt to escape was made one Spring by a certain officer, who went by the soubriquet of "Peeping-Tom."

The refuse heaps and dust-bins were cleared out daily by an old German man and a boy, who removed the rubbish in a heavy two-wheeled cart drawn by an old ox. This rubbish-cart in these days used to leave the camp without being carefully searched and was emptied some distance from it. This fact was naturally well known to the prisoners, but the question, which most people took to be unanswerable, was how to remain hidden in the rubbish and yet be alive at the end of the unpleasant journey. It remained for "Peeping-Tom" to think of a gas-mask in connection with this scheme. Borrowing one from an officer, who had been lately brought in from the front, and had retained possession of this article of equipment, he dressed himself in it, and choosing a moment when the German boy was looking the other way, and the old man had departed on some other business, he rushed to the cart and got inside. A well-trained batch of English soldier-servants then arrived, each armed with a bucketful of rubbish which they threw over the top of him, successfully hiding him from view. All would now have been well, had not fate cruelly intervened, in the shape of an old German who worked the bath-house furnace, and who occasionally came out for a breath of fresh air.

Seeing this extraordinary looking object disappear into the cart, the old Boche fetched his cap and went off to the commandant's office