CHAPTER X

NEW ARRIVALS

On March 6th a new prisoner arrived, an Englishman who had been taken in the fighting on the Congo border. When war broke out he was working in the Congo, and had promptly offered his services to the Belgians. When captured he was not in uniform, and consequently he was for a long time regarded by the Germans with grave suspicion; in fact, it was a question whether he should not be shot as a _franc tireur_. However, this did not seem to trouble him much, and in the end his explanation that he had been out shooting game and plunged straightway into the fighting on his return to camp, was accepted. He was a most extraordinary chap—a real adventurer. He gave us some wonderful accounts of all that had been happening in the outside world, and at first his confirmed optimism did much to raise our flagging spirits; but at last he rather over-reached himself, and we began to question his veracity. In the end I fear we discredited almost everything he told us, and he became known as “Baron Munchausen,” or “the Baron,” for short. He interested me a good deal, for he was a regular rolling stone, and seemed to have knocked about all over the world—the type of man who always manages just to make a living but is incapable of steady work or sustained effort. At one moment he would be rioting with pockets full of gold, but this being speedily dissipated, in a few weeks he would again be penniless and begging for any job he could get. As to his family, they had either disowned him or he had disowned them, for apparently he had not heard of or from them for years, and his home was just the place where he happened to be for the moment. I had many yarns with him, and found that he knew Shanghai better than I did myself.

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Del Luigi is another of our number who stands out in my memory by reason of his originality. An Italian living in Nairobi, he had joined the British Force as a motor-mechanic in the early days of the war, and had been ambushed on the British East Africa frontier. His account of the struggle the Askaris had with his motor-bike was very amusing. It would seem that the German in charge of the patrol which had captured him knew nothing of motors, and he ordered his Askaris to wheel the machine into camp. This they attempted, but the clutch being still in, they found the job almost more than they could manage! In reply to impatient questions Luigi said the cycle was always hard to push, and, with the most innocent face imaginable, offered to ride it in! But the German was far too cautious a bird to fall into that trap, and so the wretched Askaris, grunting and sweating, had to practically carry the heavy machine the whole way into camp!

Luigi had been one of the occupants of the Major’s room, and was consequently under suspicion. On March 18th he was seen waving to the captive and shouting a few words of encouragement. For this heinous crime he was promptly put under arrest, and after a brief trial in the office, condemned to three days’ confinement on a diet of bread and water. Shortly after he had been locked in his cell he set up the most awful row, kicking at the door as if he would break it down. Müller, one of the guards, went to investigate, and anticipating some fun, we all hung out of our windows to listen. The only language common to them both was Kiswahili, and in this they conversed. Luigi began mildly enough, but as the tale of his complaints went on, his voice rose in gradually-increasing crescendo until he was shouting at the full pitch of his lungs: “_Hapana chakula! Hapana kitanda! Hapana kiti! Hapana maji! Hapana kitu! Shenzi! Nom de Dieu!_”

Now, this being interpreted, means, “No food, no bed, no chair, no water. Nothing!” _Shenzi_—uncultivated boor—a term of opprobrium or insult much in use among the natives.

Müller, red in the face, retired beaten by this torrent of invective! Luigi got his bed, a mug of water, and the rest. But he also got his sentence extended to a week!

For some time after the Major’s attempted escape all the prisoners were confined to the Boma, and were not allowed outside its precincts even under guard. We (the officers) were especially annoyed by this restriction, for, having given our parole not to attempt to escape, we expected, and were entitled to a certain amount of liberty: the said parole laid us under greater penalties in the event of its being broken than applied to those who had not pledged their word. So I wrote to the Governor, pointing out that since we had been in no way implicated in the Major’s bid for liberty, we were undoubtedly entitled to preferential treatment, for if the Germans would not trust us they should not have asked for or accepted our parole, but simply have put us on the same footing as ordinary prisoners.

After a short interval an order came through that we should be allowed to resume our walks, and thus on Easter Sunday we recovered our comparative liberty.

It was indeed a treat to get outside that Boma again, and I marvelled at the transformation the rains had worked in the surrounding country. The plateau was knee-deep in grasses and herbs, and the slope of the hill down to the plain was almost unrecognisable. All the trees and bushes were in full leaf, and where previously there had been only bare brown earth now stretched a thick carpet of flowering plants. I wished that my knowledge of botany was more extensive, for I came across several, to me, botanical curiosities. The air was alive with butterflies of every shape and colour, and I straightway became an amateur entomologist, made a net, and started collecting, although I could not name the specimens I caught. However, all that were perfect I preserved, and stored them away in a tin with some naphthaline which I was lucky enough to find in the dispensary, and I continued to add to my collection at intervals during the rest of my imprisonment.

That spring there were many cases of malaria among us—which goes to prove that Kilimatinde is not free from the fever-bearing Anopheles, although the insects are not numerous. Culicinæ, on the other hand, swarmed after the rains, and became such a pest that in the evenings we were driven to wrap our legs in rugs as a protection from their attack. These mosquitoes were quite able to bite through one’s socks, but it usually defeated them if two pairs were worn. We were all provided with mosquito-curtains, but notwithstanding that precaution we all managed to get infected. I had my first attack in April. The experience might have been a valuable one for a medical man, for I had many cases to treat, but since I had no microscope and could not succeed in obtaining one, my diagnosis had to be made clinically, and thus I was robbed of a very favourable opportunity for a little study and research. However, I made full use of the licence allowed me in visiting the native dispensary, and here made friends with the native hospital attendant—Saidi by name, to whom was entrusted the care of the Askaris and the native population. He was a fairly intelligent specimen of his race, and quite capable of treating ordinary cases of fever, etc.

The stock of quinine in the Colony was very small, but the Germans proved themselves good chemists in that they started the manufacture of the drug. The Chinchona tree is not indigenous to Africa, but before the war some specimens had been planted at an experimental plantation somewhere in the Colony—I think it was at a place called Amani—and when the reserves of the European article began to run out they started stripping the bark off these trees and extracting the alkaloid, from which they eventually made tablets, and I was given some for the use of my patients. They were much larger than those to which we are accustomed, and as they were less highly concentrated it was necessary to give a bigger dose. These tablets were reserved for the use of the white men only; the native patients were treated with a solution called Chinoidin, in which the amount of active alkaloid was comparatively small.

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As a result of the official investigation following on the Major’s escapade, several drastic changes were made in the camp routine. Prisoners were now required to attend a roll-call in the courtyard at 6.45 a.m. (before breakfast), only officers being exempted, and no one was allowed out of their rooms after 7.30 p.m., at which hour all lights were extinguished. At 8.30 p.m. the guard came on a round of inspection, when we all had to be in our own rooms and standing by our beds. Further, it was decided that the prisoners were too comfortable, so all the “boys” were removed, with the exception only of two kept to wait upon officers, and, of course, the cook-boys who worked for Frau Mahnke. Thenceforward all prisoners had to make their own beds, clean their own rooms, fetch their food from the kitchen, and wash up after meals.

Not even to the women or the missionaries was any consideration shown. In a European country this would not have mattered very much, but in Africa, where even the poorest white has one or two native servants, the effect was to seriously lower British prestige and to give the natives the impression that we were a conquered and inferior race, and this, doubtless, is exactly what the Germans intended.

Frau Mahnke’s contract for feeding the prisoners was also altered, and the food reduced both in quantity and variety. The new scale which came into operation on May 1st, 1915, was as follows: for breakfast, coffee and bread, with either a scrap of butter and one boiled egg, or a portion of cold meat; for the midday meal, meat with boiled rice, or dried beans, or potatoes—but the latter, which appeared only at rare intervals, were boiled in their skins and consisted of the smallest of the crop, such as at home are used for feeding pigs. The last and final meal was at six in the evening, and consisted of bread with cold meat or cheese, and either soup or coffee. We much preferred the coffee, for the soup was like nothing in the world but dish-water! The meat, whether hot or cold, was always boiled, and always tough, the latter being due to the poor quality of the cattle, and the fact that the meat had to be used on the day it was killed, as it would not keep. Hot or cold, it was equally nasty, and our staple diet seemed to be boiled rice, which came to table in a sodden mass, and only the pangs of hunger enabled us to swallow it. We never had a rice-pudding, but when possible we used to buy native sugar or wild honey to help the rice down. The beans, which appeared almost as often, were a kind of haricot or dried bean, and they were boiled until soft—or at least supposed to be soft. Many people dislike them even more than the rice, but I preferred them, for in my opinion they at least contained more nutriment. The butter was half butter-milk; it was served only at breakfast, and then in such absurdly small quantities that it was only by the greatest economy that we could manage to save any for our tea or supper.

When the afternoon meal was suspended it became the general practice to save some bread and butter to eat about 4 p.m., when the pangs of hunger became insistent. The kitchen was locked after dinner was over, but a fire was usually kept burning in another small kitchen beneath the Kommandant’s quarters, and the members of each mess used to take it in turns to go down there, make up the fire, and heat the coffee. But later, for some reason which we never could fathom, this place was ordered to be kept locked too, and so most of the prisoners had to drink their coffee cold, and since we had no milk, and sugar was far too precious to squander unnecessarily, it was but poor comfort.

Shortly before all these irritating restrictions came into force we officers had been moved to a different part of the Boma, and we now occupied a sort of small flat over the post-office. It comprised two rooms, and was reached by an outside stair leading up to a small verandah which faced east. When we were debarred from using the kitchens, T—— very cleverly contrived a small stove which we used in the inner room, and whereon we managed to heat our coffee. It really answered very well, the only drawback being that the room at times got uncomfortably full of smoke, and as fires in the prisoners’ rooms were not allowed, we had to be careful we were not spotted. One afternoon Müller unexpectedly came running up our staircase, and we had just time to plunge the stove bodily into a bucket of water, while one of us commenced to pull vigorously at his pipe to account for the smoky atmosphere! It is a tribute to the strength and aroma (?) of the native pat-tobacco that the guard noticed nothing unusual!

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On May 2nd the arrival in camp of the Italian Consul gave us our first intimation that Italy had declared war.

In June there was great excitement, for we were informed that we might send letters to our friends, but we were also warned that we must give no news other than such as was purely personal, nor mention in what part of the Colony we were interned.

That mail left Kilimatinde on June 4th, and it eventually reached its destination.