CHAPTER XXI IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY

The German soldiers, who were guarding me, seemed to be decent sort of men, and treated me fairly well, as soldiers who have been fighting each other usually act. All through my army experience I have found that those in safe non-combatant positions are the most fierce and relentless towards those who are disarmed and helpless. My captors allowed me to use my first aid bandages, with which I bound up my hurts as best I could.

The sprain was so painful that I could not walk, and they had almost to carry me to the rear. My arm also stung.

I noticed on every side the destruction wrought by war. I could not have believed such ruin possible, had I not seen it. Abandoned guns, broken gun-carriages and air craft, ammunition piled up to be abandoned or destroyed, supplies and munitions amid wrecks of ruined buildings, and trampled yellow grain. Several of these grain fields had been fired by the invaders and extinguished by the merciful rain. Among the life-sustaining grain were dead men, dead horses and in two instances I saw badly wounded Prussian soldiers that had been abandoned in the necessity for haste, or because they were of no further use. There were, also, the lesser wreckage of fragments of clothing, knapsacks, broken rifles and innumerable small fragments of war’s ruin and ravage.

I was in considerable pain and constantly cried out when hurried; for I intended to emphasize my injuries for purposes of my own. My captors were, apparently, disgusted with me. They talked and gestured until I began to fear that they were debating whether or not to lessen their trouble by knocking me on the head. Finally they picked up a discarded rifle, halted, and fitted a piece of wood in the muzzle, and handing it to me, made motions that I was to use it for a crutch.

That night, while shut in the room of a partially ruined dwelling, I was helped to wash, and put cold water bandages on my hurts and slept fairly well. In the morning the pain from my sprain was mostly gone. I washed my wounded arm and wet and rewound my bandages. I could have walked had I chose; but I determined to keep that hurt for strategic use; for I had firmly resolved not to go to a German prison. Their reputation as providers was so bad that, to use expressive slang, “I couldn’t see it.”

All the food I was given up to that time was some coarse wheat bread and not a scrap of meat; and some hot water bewitched into imitation of coffee. But the guards themselves did not have any better fare so far as I could see.

One of my two guards was a clean-faced, good-looking German boy who seemed of a higher class than his heavy-faced comrade. He took my crutch from me and made motions that I was to stand. I tried to look meek and obedient, and cried out and buckled up with pretended pain. Seeing this, he restored my rifle crutch, and put one hand under my arm to help me as I limped painfully along.

While I was on the outlook for a chance to use my crutch for a club and my legs for escape, my hopes were dashed by the guard taking me to a large house, around which sentinels were stationed.

After a parley with a sentinel who was pacing the broad doorway, I was conducted into a large room where were several officers, orderlies and clerks, some of them writing at a big table, on which were spread maps, papers, and big books that looked like ledgers.

No notice was taken of me at first. The clerks continued writing, the officers talking, until there bustled into the room a tall, blond officer with several decorations flashing on his breast, and an air of decision and command that can not be expressed in words. The other officers clicked their heels and saluted, the clerks did the same. The officer made a careless but graceful acknowledgment by return salute, spoke a few sharp guttural words that set several of the officers and attendants hustling and addressed a few words to a man, who but for his uniform looked like a clerk. Then turning to me, he motioned for me to stand, and in good English interrogated:

“What is your regiment?”

I told him, for I could not see how he could get any good out of the truth.

“Oh,” he said, “a Massachusetts man. What part?”

“Western Massachusetts, Berkshire county.”

“Your name?”

“Second Lieutenant David Stark.”

“How many men have you here?”

“I don’t know, but a lot of them and more coming.”

He spoke a few words of command to the clerk, who pulled out a big ledger-looking book, ran his finger over its pages, and made some answer, then resumed his interrogations.

“Why are you in the army?”

“I like it, sir.”

He smiled a wry smile, and asked, “You’ve got over that by this time?”

“Not much,” I replied defiantly.

“Ach!” he snarled. “You like it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are of the New Hampshire Starks, perhaps?”

“My folks came from there originally.”

I was amazed at his exact knowledge--and showed it.

He smiled and continued, “The Cromwell Roundhead breed!”

Then he questioned me sharply about the American army, to most of which I replied, “I don’t know.” I think that he got little satisfaction out of the answers.

“Did you know,” he finally said sharply, scrutinizing my face closely, “a Lieutenant Nickerson of your regiment?”

The question, coming abruptly, threw me a little off my balance, but I replied steadily, “I did know a person who called himself by that name; but I should not know him now.”

“How’s that?” he inquired crisply.

“I once thought him to be a true man, and I would not like to kill him, as I might have to do should we meet again.”

“Why?”

“He has turned traitor and spy. Such men should be shot.”

“Ach! Then you’d kill a Prussian soldier--a gentleman?”

“Yes, sir; that’s what we are here in France for!” But my own words cut me to the heart, when I had spoken them of Jot.

With a gesture of dismissal he turned from me to one of the officers, and made a remark that I did not understand. But his face and manner led me to believe that he had got something out of my replies not displeasing to him.

Sharply giving more orders, with more clicking of heels and salutes, he entered a near-by door to his private office. I was informed, afterwards, that this officer had, previous to the war, been a professor in one of our New England colleges.

Under guard of the young soldier I have mentioned, I was conducted, limping, to the street, helped through the doorway of an isolated wall--all that was left standing of a building--and found myself in an enclosure of barbed wire.

In this pen were other American officers and soldiers, and several Frenchmen.

“More fish,” cried out a corporal.

I was in bad humor and replied savagely: “Speak for yourself. If you think it is funny to be here, I don’t.”

“It’s Lieutenant Stark!” exclaimed a soldier, coming to me and saluting. He was one of my men of yesterday’s fight.

Then a captain came forward with extended hand saying, “You made a good fight. I was with the rescue party and saw some of it and heard more. Were you wounded?”

“Slightly,” I said, with a motion towards the wounded arm; “but they wouldn’t have got me, but for this sprained ankle.” And I limped forward and sat down with my back to the wall.

“Then you didn’t surrender?”

“No, sir.”

“He ain’t that breed of cats,” said my soldier--Private George Williams.

“Then what breed of cats is he?” asked another flippantly. Prisoners don’t stand much on ceremony.

“Tiger cat!” replied Williams. Then I saw him talking with those around him, and I inferred that he was telling about the fight.

A lieutenant whose manner I did not like--and there are a good many things I am not pleased with, when I am hungry--came to me, and in an insinuating way asked, “Any chance of making a break here?”

“I haven’t thought of it,” I replied. “I have just come.”

I distrusted the man, I do not know why, except that his manner was over sweet. Then he suggested a plan so impractical that I wondered if he was in his senses.

“What do you think of it?” he inquired.

“Good idea!” I replied, “if you are figuring to get killed.”

I turned my back on the fellow, and made up my mind that whatever plans might be made in the future, I would have no part in any that _he_ might have a part in; which only shows how strong my prejudices are about people to whom I have taken a dislike.

“What are the chances for ‘chow,’ Williams?” I called.

“Haven’t seen any, or smelled a sniff of any since I got here,” he replied. “I guess the Kaiser when he planned this war forgot that cog in its wheels; for prisoners at least.”

It certainly looked like it, and I was hungry enough to eat a Boche uncooked, when about four o’clock in the afternoon some wheat bread and vegetable soup were given us--but not enough for a hungry man.

I still persisted in having a lame ankle, and if my face and actions were to be taken in evidence, it was a corker.

I made several acquaintances among the officers and privates too during the day, and talked with Williams about the prospects of making an escape. To which he replied: “There ain’t any!” And I finally agreed with him.

So I rolled up in my blankets, and went sound asleep.