I was born in a small town, and I’m a small town guy. A small town always gets the full advantage of propaganda, and as people in small towns do not have a great variety of subjects to talk about when they once get a good one it has a long season. The folks around the towns where I had lived in the West and Middle West had been led to believe that while the ideal environment for the ground work of stability of character was to be found in the broad, open atmosphere of the country west of the Mississippi, yet for further polish and refinement it was necessary to seek the Eastern States, or better, to sojourn a while in England or France. There was some discussion as to which was the better of these two places. However, for the final graduation in culture, it was an entirely different story—there were no two sides to the argument at all that the post graduate course in refinement could be obtained but at one place in the whole wide world. There was no alternative. It was thoroughly agreed that if one aspired to become a finished product with the proper veneer, that person must beat it to Germany and become Kultured. Perhaps this feeling was the 220result of well-directed German propaganda; at any rate, it was a firmly established belief where I lived, at least. This “Kultur” bunk had never interested me, for I always had felt that the United States was good enough. A man who had good tips on the horse races was a hundred times more interesting to me than a much vaunted German Count who came from the wonderful country of Wagner, Goethe and Schiller. At that, though, I had studied German a couple of years in preparatory school, but I want to say here and now that the only reason for my doing it was because the only other choice was Latin, which was entirely beyond the possibilities of my mind. So when I finished the laborious German course at school I promptly proceeded to forget it.
Now fortune had thrust upon me the opportunity for which many Americans before the war had vainly wished—namely, a sojourn in Germany and a course in Kultur, for, indeed, was I not being entertained as a guest of the German Government—or was it the jest of the German Government?
Thus in spite of the fact that I never aspired to become Kultured, it was certain that I was going to get it whether I wished it or not. It was like the compulsory inoculations and vaccinations in the army—there was no choice in the matter for the poor guy who’s getting it.
Perhaps the condition of my appetite had something to do with the shaping of my observations as to the actual working of German Kultur, for I was 221hungry when I was made prisoner and that empty feeling never left me from the time I was shot down until several weeks after I was released.
All during the first day of our imprisonment we had nothing to eat, except the dainty “tea of bribery” at the session of the court of inquiry in the afternoon, and the only effect of that tea was to whet our already cutting appetites. So, having been returned from the session of court, we sat down on a rude bench in our dingy abode at the Montmedy prison camp to brood over our misfortune and to settle down for that course in Kultur. We were thoroughly blue, for the only joys in life during that day had been the facts that we had successfully lied to the German Intelligence Officer and so far we had not divulged any military information.
And here is a point that I noticed all through Germany from the officers on down—with rare exceptions. A German will promise you anything in order to appear affable and pleasant. It is commonly done, and they get off with it for a certain time. From these continued observations of unfulfilled promises I formed a definition of “Kultur.” In my mind it is that superficial and subtle form of hypocrisy practised by the German race and commonly accepted by them as justifiable and necessary in their state of affairs, which permits of the affording of temporary satisfaction in meeting the emergency in hand by giving indiscriminate promises—which promises are never fulfilled nor intended to be fulfilled at the time of making; and which further permits 222and justifies the explanation of nonfulfillment of promises by the giving of more and similar empty and insincere promises.
Our room was rather chilly, for in our absence the fire had gone out. With the wood we had coerced from the sergeant the orderly finally came in and built us a little fire. We used French economy, for we were quite sure that it was going to be cold before the night was over, with the limited covering they had given us.
I was getting as hungry as the snake which sleeps all winter, or summer, whichever it is. So I put it up to the orderly, who politely told us he would bring our food at once. I am sure we waited a full hour and a half for that food and I was experiencing all sorts of sensations as to whether slow starvation was about to begin. I remembered reading that starving people were sometimes sustained by chewing shoe leather, so I was wondering how long my poor shoes would last at a ration of a square inch of leather to chew each day. This hunger was getting my goat. I had heard of walking off intoxication and seasickness so I decided to try walking off hunger.
I opened the door and walked into the surrounding boneyard, which was hemmed in by several high fences of barbed wire. While most prison camps are well lighted at night in order that there will be little possibility of any one escaping without being seen by one of the many guards, this was different, in that it seemed totally dark. Perhaps the reason for this was its proximity to the lines, or it might have been 223that it was too early for lights. I was just milling around aimlessly when suddenly from somewhere without the darkness came a voice in German and so gruffly that it almost took me off my feet. I realized that I was being addressed individually, and while the words meant nothing to me, the tone of voice in which they were spoken convinced me that it could be nothing else than the familiar old “Halt! Who goes there?” Not being well versed in the number of times a German sentry calls his challenge before he fires, I took a chance on one of the few words I knew and quickly answered “Freund,” for, as I figured it, “Friend” is a harmless word any way you take it. The old squarehead only answered “Ja” and quite unconcernedly walked on.
“Well,” I thought, “this is easy.” So, continuing my tour, I got around to the side where I found that during the day some prisoners had been working, probably digging weeds, for to my pleasant surprise I discovered, perhaps for their own purposes, they had left their tools, including a couple of spades. Such luck, for with those spades, on such a dark night it would be easily possible to tunnel out. The big rub was that the orderly told us that the door to the hut would be locked at nine o’clock and that we could not go out of the house until seven o’clock the next morning. It was then about a quarter of nine, so I went in and told Davis, and he, of course, agreed to attempt to escape that night. The big point first was to manage to get out of the house, which could only be effected by crawling through a window. 224Davis was just in the act of testing the strength of the window when the door opened and the orderly came in with our sumptuous repast. In ravenous anxiety we sized up the banquet—it consisted of a piece of hard, mealy, black bread, dimensions two inches by three inches by three inches, and in a pot was the rest of the dinner, which consisted of soup.
I never did like soup, but I’ll say this much in favor of it: I have never enjoyed a meal in my life like I enjoyed that soup. We had two nice tin pans in which to serve our soup. We put the pot on the stove to keep it warm while I proceeded to dish it out, spoonful by spoonful, the liquid coming first; then we divided the remaining vegetables—two dilapidated looking spuds and three little samples of hard, gritty, grimy meat. I gave Davis one piece and I took the other, then we matched three times to see who would get the other piece. We matched, and the first time I won; the next flip Davis won. Believe me, small and insignificant as that piece of meat was, I was too hungry to lose it, so I got cold feet.
“Davis,” I suggested, “this is damned foolishness. We’ll cut that meat in two pieces. I’m scared I’m going to lose.”
As Davis was cutting it this hard, gritty, grimy, little piece of meat slipped and fell into a pail of water which we had just lifted off the stove. Like two South Sea Islanders diving for coins thrown by the generous tourist from shipboard, we rescued the meat by diving into the water with both hands, making a beautiful splash all over the floor. Davis 225showed himself to be a religious sort of a guy, for he suggested that since we had been so lucky in escaping with our lives that we make a burnt offering of this meat. I didn’t know whether he was joking or not about the burnt offering, so I took no chance on his not being serious and told him we had already made one burnt offering that day in burning up that airplane. Without further argument we sliced the meat into two pieces and each had his portion.
I had eaten about half of my bread and was still so hungry that I could have eaten puckery persimmons with considerable relish when I realized that if we intended trying to escape that night we had best lay off mincing that bread, for we would certainly need it the next day. We talked it over, then viewed it from every angle, but since we were in occupied French territory we decided that I could speak enough French, and with Davis’s pathetic eyes we could sure win enough favor with the “froggies” to get by, although they probably had barely enough to eat themselves.
We crawled into our bunks without removing our clothes for the reason that it was too cold to sleep without them and we also intended to get out during the night. About two o’clock, after continued tossing and tumbling, wondering just what process we would follow in the attempt, I got up and awakened Davis; then I crept to the window. After a good twenty minutes of tinkering with that window, cautiously moving it an eighth of an inch at a time, I finally got it open to such a point that we could get out—at 226least, so I thought. Directly in front of us was one of those little houses so commonly used at garrisons in France and Germany, known as Sentry Boxes. I figured the old boy would be in there all right, but he would be fast asleep, so I stuck my head out, gave a little spring, and as I brought my stomach up on the sill like a flash from out the sentry box stepped this hardboiled Boche. He had a huge flashlight and immediately I was in the spotlight. The window was the stage and I the star. There is some humor in the situation, now as I look back upon it, but believe me, there was none then. For when that German began to excitedly ejaculate “Loze! Loze!” whatever that is, I took my head to cover just like a tortoise draws his protruding physiognomy into the secret confines of his shell.
“It’s all right,” I called as we hit for our bunk, “we’ve got to have a little air.”
That night we almost froze to death, for we didn’t dare to close the window, for we did not know the extent of the German sentry’s memory of foreign expressions, and the fact that we left the window open all night would be a good alibi for opening the window in that we did need air. It was a hard result, but since it was our story we shivered and stuck to it. Take it from me, we were icebergs the next morning.
Fortunately they served us an early breakfast, which consisted of some hot German Ersatz coffee, which is no coffee at all. It is made from acorns and it doesn’t go well as a substitute. In fact, you must 227train your appetite and taste for Ersatz just as you do for olives. They brought us a little confiture, which was also imitation and it didn’t have any more consistency than a marshmallow. The orderly started to walk away and simultaneously Davis bawled out, “Where is our bread?” The orderly explained that they had given us our allowance last night for twenty-four hours.
If this was to be our regular ration I could see ourselves starving to death by degrees. It was useless to say that they had not given us enough, for that line does not appeal to the German. If each of us received a piece of bread, that settled the argument, but if the allowance for both of us was brought in one piece there was room for discussion. The orderly claimed he had brought two pieces of bread, but I claimed that he had brought only one piece, so how did we know it was supposed to be for the both of us. Finally I said that I was going to tell an officer. This got results, for after conferences between the Sergeant of the Camp, the Corporal of the Guard, the Orderly, the Cook and the Keeper of the Official Storehouse they brought us in another little piece of bread.
The next night they brought in a French pilot, who was supposed to have been shot down the night before on a bombing raid. We suspected right off that he was a German spy trying to gain our confidence, for the first thing he did was to tell us in French how much he hated the Germans and to give us addresses of people who could help us to escape when we got 228to Karlsruhe, which, he said, was the place they sent all prisoners. He said he could speak but little English and knew no German at all.
After venturing a lot of information about the number of his squadron and its location he asked me the number of my squadron. I told him the number of my squadron was “2106” but that I had forgotten the name of the airdrome, as we had only flown up there. Then he began to suggest some of our prominent airdromes to assist my memory. I did not bite at his bait, but rapidly changed the subject. Then he began to play solitaire with our cards, at the same time paying very keen attention to our conversation.
I decided to ............