CHAPTER XIX

RELEASED!

By the beginning of October (1916) the food-supply was in a very bad way. We were living almost entirely on sour mealy-meal and chirocco, with only occasionally a very little meat. The sourness of the maize meal was due to the way in which it was prepared, namely, pounded by native women in small wooden tubs and the grain thoroughly wetted before pounding. This was no drawback if the meal was used at once, but when kept for weeks and months, naturally it was bound to ferment. About this time, too, our final ration of sugar and coffee was issued; at least, we were told it was the last in Madaba. With care we reckoned it might last for two or three weeks, and we believed that by that time we should be free. I am convinced that the Germans were of the same opinion.

For two or three days in succession we were greatly cheered by the sound of what we believed to be gunfire. There was a sturdy old Pan-German in the place with whom I used to talk, and he agreed that it was most probably cannon that we heard, and admitted that they were bound sooner or later to lose the Colony. But—never for one instant would he allow the possibility of a German defeat in Europe. He told me, and himself firmly believed, that the Germans could invade England when they pleased, and had only as yet refrained because the Kaiser was loth to invade the country of his friend and kinsman, King George, if he could attain his ends by other means. I asked him how he imagined such a project could be executed, but he only replied: “I do not know. No one knows. There are only two or three men in Germany—the heads of the army—who have knowledge of the scheme, but everyone knows it cannot fail. One day you will see it put in operation, and then—_Ach!_”

Alas! I fear our “gunfire” was, after all, a myth; anyway, a sound closely resembling it was accounted for very simply. A well was being dug in the river-bed not far from the camp, and every time the bucket used for raising the earth hit the bottom it gave forth a dull boom closely resembling the sound of distant guns.

On Tuesday, October 10th, we took up our quarters in the newly-constructed camp. The accommodation was certainly much better, and, it being the dry season, we were not troubled by mosquitoes; but I prophesied that in wet weather it would be intolerable, for it was on the bank of a stream and in low-lying ground. When I pointed this out to the Kommandant he as good as said it would be all over before the rains set in, adding, as an after-thought, that anyway it could be moved when necessary.

With the dramatic suddenness of the long-expected, my provisional release came on October 11th—the very next day after we had moved into the new camp. It happened in this wise. Some few days previously, at the time when the first batch left, the Freiherr had asked me if I cared to go under the same conditions. I pointed out that, as I was not in any case a combatant officer, it was absurd to ask me not to take part in any future fighting or to forego the legitimate exercise of my profession. He now told me that he had received a communication from the Commander-in-Chief authorising him to set me at liberty provided I would sign a paper undertaking to disclose nothing of military importance that I might have seen or heard. He further promised that medical attendance should be provided for the prisoners left behind. Naturally I was overjoyed at the proffered chance of escape from that nightmare camp and all its attendant horrors, and after consulting with the others I decided to accept the modified conditions offered. At the same time I persuaded four of the men who were very ill that they could, in the circumstances, conscientiously sign the oath required of them; I was convinced that they would only die if they remained. A Portuguese also signed, and next day the six of us departed.

We proceeded first to Mahenge, reaching there on the 17th. Here we found four of the prisoners who had attempted to run away on the day before we left that fortress, and heard how the fifth had died in the Bush from blackwater-fever. They were being well treated, and in the matter of food were much better off than the wretched companions we had left behind at Madaba. Our old camp had been turned into a native hospital for Askaris, so the men were lodged in one of the rooms of the Boma. The Kommandant—Major von Grawert of most unblessed memory—had gone south with a contingent to meet the Nyassaland forces, and I was lodged in his house. I wished he could have known this, for it seemed such a just retribution for his discourteous refusal to grant me any fitting living accommodation when I was under his charge.

We rested for one day at Mahenge, and I took a walk round the village and out to the mission station, where I found the man whom we had left behind ill with blackwater-fever. He was convalescent, and looking forward to release in the near future, but was not yet strong enough to accompany us. I messed with the German officers, and had some interesting talks with them about the war. They expressed the opinion that the Allies would be the first to become exhausted and have to give in, and were convinced that hostilities would not outlast the winter of 1917. The war would, they argued naïvely, be so very bad for trade, and of course it was well known that Britain would sacrifice anything and everything to “business” interests!... And here again crops up the fundamental error in psychology which, unless I am very much mistaken, will prove the downfall of Germany.

Two of these officers were wearing the Iron Cross—a fact they were most anxious I should notice and comment upon. It appeared that the authority to wear these had been received by wireless that very day. This did not surprise me, for I knew that they had a station which, while not powerful enough to transmit messages to Berlin, was yet capable of receiving them. I enquired how the news of the particular actions for which these decorations had been conferred got through to Germany, and was informed with a sly wink that the letters were sent _via_ Portuguese East Africa. They admitted that this was a long and difficult process, but affirmed that they usually got through in time.

Before leaving Mahenge the surplus pay accumulated from the three rupees a day I was allowed to draw was handed to me, partly in silver, but mainly in paper notes. These latter I was most unwilling to accept, and pointed out that I should probably find great difficulty in cashing them, but they assured me that the D.O.A. bank at Dar-es-Salaam would cash them at par. Needless to say, when I arrived there I found the said bank had been taken over by the British, and no one would _look_ at my poor little notes. However, I kept them, and later handed them in at the Admiralty, as the sum they represented had been deducted from my pay. Of course the Admiralty allowed me full compensation for them, and I hope they will be duly presented to Germany for settlement when the final day of reckoning arrives. These notes were manufactured in the Colony when it was found that silver rupees were getting scarce. The Indian tradesmen—wily fellows—buried all the rupees that came into their hands rather than bank them, and to this practice the shortage of specie was largely due.

We left Mahenge on Thursday, October 19th. Feldwebel Hertzhog (who proved to be the owner of the large rubber-plantation at Sanya) went in charge of us, and as he spoke no English I had to act as his interpreter. This time we crossed the Ulanga by means of a ferry. A long steel wire, to which a European-built boat was attached by means of a running block, had been stretched across the narrowest part of the river, and the force of the current took the boat across much quicker than natives could paddle. It travelled either way with equal ease simply by altering the position of the tiller.

There was, of course, a German in charge of the ferry, and there seemed to be a lot of traffic proceeding in both directions. We stayed the night at Ifakara, where I made the acquaintance of two German medical men whom I had not met before. They proved very hospitable, and invited me to dine with them. I found that they had established a hospital in the mission buildings and had a considerable number of patients in their charge.

Four days later, on Wednesday, October 25th, we reached Solwa. The mill had been burnt out and only the bare walls were left standing. I was told the damage had been done by a bomb dropped from one of our aircraft, but I believe that in reality the Germans had themselves set fire to the place to prevent its falling intact into enemy hands.

This was as far as the Feldwebel had orders to conduct us, and we had to await the arrival of another escort. He turned up in the afternoon, but would not consent to our taking the road again until after nightfall. We started soon after 6 p.m. There was no moon and it was very dark; we could not see a yard ahead. An hour’s walk brought us to the river Ruhaha, the approaches to which were cumbered by the trees which had been felled in all directions. Lighted only by the dull glow of a paraffin lamp, it was difficult and dangerous walking. We were ferried across the river in canoes. I had heard that the Germans had built a bridge here, but though I peered into the darkness, I could see no sign of it. On reaching the further side we had still about an hour and a half’s tramp before we reached Kidote, where we were to sleep.

I had my evening meal with our escort, Leutenant zur See Franckenburg. When war broke out he had been an officer in a merchantship, and when she put in at one of the Portuguese East African ports, he had travelled up on foot to offer his services to Von Lettow. He spoke good English.

Kidote seemed deserted, and although I knew there must be a large German camp in the vicinity, I saw no sign of it.

On the next morning, Thursday, October 26th, yet another officer arrived to conduct us on the last lap of our journey. All his insignia of rank were covered up, but I made out one star on his shoulder beneath the khaki covering and thus knew he was a Lieutenant; later I discovered his name was Poehl. With him were an Unter-Offizier, a German private, and two black Askaris, who each carried a small white flag on the end of a long bamboo. About half a dozen native porters also accompanied us and carried our gear.

We started about seven in the morning. Poehl told me he did not know exactly where we should find the British forces, but hoped we should not have far to go. It appeared that only a week before they had pushed right up to Kidote, and had then, for some cause unknown to the Germans, retired. Various reasons were adduced to account for this manœuvre; the one most generally accepted was that plague had broken out; another that the Boers in South Africa had revolted; and yet another that the troops in German East Africa had refused to fight any more. Needless to say, all were wrong.

Just outside Kidote we came on the evacuated British post, and from here all the way to Mfrisi, where we fell in with the British outposts, the road was lined with the rotting carcases of horses and cattle which had died from trypanosomiasis, the disease conveyed by the tse-tse fly which abounds in this district; there was carrion in various stages of putrefaction every few hundred yards, and the stench was appalling. The flies, too, were particularly vicious all along the road, and we were all bitten more or less. Luckily this trypanosoma is not capable of giving rise to disease in humans, though a somewhat similar germ, also conveyed by a variety of tse-tse, is the cause of sleeping sickness.

After we had been travelling for some time we met a German scout returning from reconnoitring the British position, and from him learnt that there was still a British post at Mfrisi.

Although the district through which we were passing was the same through which we had travelled when going from Morogoro to Mahenge, I did not recognise the road in the least, for it was one made by the British pioneers and had not followed the same line as the old native track. Presently we were halted, and told to discard and leave behind all German Government property and keep only our own personal belongings; consequently we had to leave our beds and bedding, though I kept one German blanket which was packed in my bag. I had made sure our private bundles would be searched, and so had very reluctantly burnt a small diary I had been keeping, for it contained several references—not of a complimentary character—to Germans, and I thought if it was found I might be escorted back to captivity! However, I had taken the precaution to copy all important dates on to a small piece of paper which I successfully concealed, and it is chiefly from this that the notes for the present narrative were compiled. As it turned out, I might, after all, have kept my diary, because, for a wonder, our private possessions were not interfered with.

When we resumed our march Leutenant Poehl and I walked together. He spoke English perfectly and had travelled in Scotland quite a lot. He asked me why the English were so bitter against the Germans. I replied that, so far as I knew, there was no undue bitterness, my countrymen being rather an easy-going race and by no means given to harsh or hasty judgments. But he insisted that such bitterness _must_ exist, else why did our papers publish such untrue accounts of German doings in Belgium? I told him that, as I had not seen an English paper since my capture, I had no knowledge of the reports to which he referred. Then he assured me that his countrymen would never act otherwise than courteously to women and children, and that the shooting of civilians in Belgium was a necessary measure of reprisal because they had shot German soldiers from the windows of houses; and, furthermore, that such reprisals had only actually occurred in one instance! “And,” he went on, “the brutalities of the Russians whom you are fighting to support are infinitely worse than anything my people have done in Belgium.” Having no certain information of the facts at that time, I could neither argue with him nor refute his statements.

It was while we were thus walking and talking together that one of the Askaris, who was carrying a white flag just ahead of us, suddenly gave a yell and jumped to the side of the road. Looking up, we saw about a hundred yards away a stalwart South African covering us with his rifle, and in a twinkling we flung our arms above our heads and shouted to him not to fire. A moment later he was joined by others, and, still keeping us covered, they motioned to us to approach one at a time. When they heard that some of us were British prisoners, one of their number was despatched with a message to the camp, and in a few minutes an officer appeared and we were formally handed over.

These words sound bald—almost commonplace—and yet it was thus—quite simply—that passed what in retrospect must surely appear one of the most dramatic moments of our lives....

After two years of captivity we were _free_!