Diary of Annie's War (18 page)

We read in the papers that after this month all small change will be given in postage stamps. For instance when we go into a shop and give one shilling and want eight pence change we get one penny or half penny stamps. I wonder what it means. It’s such a funny way of doing business. Why not have sixpence notes? We have had one shilling (mark) since the first week of the war and if you give ten shillings (paper of course) you get change, say nine shillings in paper. We have one, two, three and five shilling notes and they are so dirty.

Elizabeth Day and it is a general holiday for she is the patron saint of Hildesheim. Protestant and Catholic have a general holiday and all the shops are closed. There are three masses, just as Sunday, in all the churches.

Arthur has written me a nice long letter and I have sent him a parcel. He says it is a long time since he has had anything from England so I must write to them. He reminds me that it is over twelve months since we were separated. But there is no need to remind me. Why? Because I cannot bear to think of it!

I had a letter from Alice Graeinghoff and one from Mrs. Durselen and she promises to visit me in the New Year. I have just filled in my paper with all the brass and copper and it is ready when called up. Such a lot has been given by the free willing that we hope for peace before ours is needed.

In the last fourteen days there has been great progress in Serbia, Nis has fallen, and it is the greatest fortress the Serbians have and each day we read of a few thousand prisoners. I got a ‘Times’ yesterday and read of the dreadful Armenian outrages but there was not a word in our papers. I should think it is a surprise to England that Nis has fallen so very quickly.

Last week a priest was arrested here. They think he is a spy. The poor man, he has had a time. First he was in Alsace Lorraine and was taken for a spy there, he is German, and so the French ill-used him. He came here for protection and after three months he is now in prison. Some dreadful tales are about.

I hear today that Canon Heiser, the old priest I used to confess to, is very ill and not expected to live. I am so very grieved for I am very fond of the old gentleman and I realise that I must get a new confessor and that is not so nice for me in a strange land. He spoke English so very well.

Belle says she reads in the paper that Leo Havermann (Arthur’s cousin) is dead. It does not trouble me. I have nothing to thank him for. He was very unkind to me in my trouble for which I shall never forget. He thought that the world and God else was only for the Germans. Still I wish him a peaceful rest. He might have been kinder to a lonely woman in a strange land during war time.

We have the foot and mouth disease in many a village and it is a great pity for we were short of milk and butter before we got this disease.

The little children are all wearing wooden shoes for leather is not to be got at all. It makes such a noise to hear a crowd coming from school. So many of the children have a breaking out on their hands and faces, it seems to be a regular disease, poor blood I suppose. It is because the food cannot be nourishing as so much is potato food and the flour you buy is half potato meal.

Rosie is on a visit to me so being three we are very comfortable.

There is a notice in the papers about people laughing at the Landstorm men when they are drilling and is forbidding them to do it. I think it is a great shame for the most of the poor fellows have never been in the army having being exempt because of some ailment in their youth. Now they must all go out and fight. When one is forty-five-years-old one is not as able as the young ones. Also they are very stiff. Still it is dreadful of the people to laugh and I feel so sorry for them for they are mostly married and all look so very sad.

All red wine is to be confiscated on December 1
^st
.

This week has been very cold and we have frost.

Arthur writes me that he has hopes of leave in early spring so he must have heard something of it.

Frau Mummers says that she has a son, a waiter in England, and he is imprisoned. His wife visits every week. Yet here it is not at all allowed.

Not much to report only that there is a shortage of lard and there is to be no more until after Christmas. We have the cards but cannot buy it. Margarine is one shilling and eight pence per pound and can be got only by chance. If a shop gets a box of margarine there are crowds waiting for it.

Herr Grebe has announced all my goods. Each piece of silver, old furniture, jewellery, all monies, papers, properties etc. has been sent in. It has been a job.

It is sad to read of Serbia and now all talk is of Egypt and the American note on Austria. I don’t think anything will come of it. It was the same over the
Lusitania
.

There is an order that we give all our rubbish to the government. Soldiers are at every house this week with small carts for old rags, metal, paper, clothes boxes. Anything you have in the cellars, or attics, that is not in use must be given up. The mode of organisation is wonderful and not a scrap of anything is wasted here. I wonder if it is the same at home. Even the little children work for the government as much as they can. Every one does what they can to help, even the poorest ones. If such methods were in England then such a lot could be done at very little expense.

Today there is a notice and we are not to bake any cakes for Christmas as it is forbidden to use flour, yeast, eggs or fat of any description. We know that the cakes we buy are made of potato, meat, egg powder and baking powder.

There is also a notice that they are coming for the metal, copper and brass. That was announced in October so our wash kettle and brass candlesticks must go and then we will have enough ammunition for
six years.
I do hope the war will not last as long as that. I feel so often without any hope at all of an end to it.

Ny, (the butter woman), who comes here from the dairy tells me we are to have only a quarter pound of butter a
week
per person and we will have cards from the police just like the bread cards. That is very little when you think there is no cooking fat to be got at all. There seems to be a famine in fat.

One day this week there was a deal of grumbling in the market as regards food. They ask you at the post, when you send a parcel to the field, if there is fat of any kind in it because it is forbidden. The soldiers are not to receive any from home because they get fat in their food in the field.

It is forbidden to sell yeast at all to prevent the people from baking for fear they use eggs or lard and because some have a store from the summer. It is dreadful for poor people and they must have hunger at these prices.

A woman with one child only gets twenty-one shillings and sixpence a
month
from the government and often has quartered on her a soldier. If she is very poor she must go to the Red Cross Society and they often pay half her rent and give her a ticket for so much food. The husband in the field gets sixpence a day so he cannot send much home.

My quartering came on December 12
^th
and it was two soldiers from the lazarett. They have been wounded in Russia and now they are better they must return in a few weeks. I had made arrangements for them to sleep at a neighbour’s and she gives them coffee in the morning and a vegetable soup in the evening. I pay nine pence for each man and she gets also one and a half pence a day from the government for each man. This woman’s husband is in the field and she has two rooms ready for the soldiers.

Having six in all it pays her for one fire and one light is enough. But when you reckon that coal is two shillings a hundredweight and coke is one shilling and eight pence a hundredweight it is very dear firing. We are glad that they are so very comfortably off. They come here one night a week for supper and Hannah (the kitchen maid) has them in the kitchen and I send them a bottle of beer and a cigar each. One speaks English perfectly and the other has a good idea of it having learnt it at school. Both are very nice fellows and must come from good homes. They said to me: ‘Don’t worry about your husband being in Ruhleben. It’s better than being in the field in winter. If he was free he would be in the military’.

I have felt it for a long time that of the two evils it is better as it is, for both bring anxiety.

Tea, coffee and cocoa are called up by the government and we are only allowed to have so much in our houses. Also milk is to be censored. In my opinion this all points to famine for the poor people.

The weather is cold but not as cold as in early December. Then we had twelve degrees of frost and many burst water pipes and no plumber to repair them. It is in these things that we miss the men. It is a great trouble to get any jobs done. I should like a lot of wood sent here from the estate but cannot get anyone to do the carting as both men and horses fail.

Such a poor lot of horses are on the streets and I feel so sorry for them. At the rate of food (three pounds of corn per day) they are simply a bag of bones. I remarked one day that: ‘I have never in all my life seen such horses’.

The reply came: ‘I never in all my life saw such a war as this’.

So it is with everything else.

I am glad it is the end of the year and we can at least wonder what the next will bring us. We can hope for better days even if we do not get them.

Arthur wrote me on the 18
^th
saying that he had a pudding from Lily for Christmas and he was so pleased.

I heard nothing from home.

I am glad that Christmas is over. Belle and I spent it very quietly here. On one evening we went to Carole Osthaus and the next evening Carole and Fil Lebereuhn came to us.

The two soldiers came for supper on the 26
^th
so I left them in the dining room for the evening with Hannah and the soldiers had a pleasant evening.

Belle and I went to the cathedral and then returned home and went to bed. I had to get up to go to the police (my daily visit) and then we had dinner and then another rest. That is how we spent Christmas. I thought the whole time of home and wondered how many were there together. It makes one sad when I think of the big parties we had only a very few years ago. And where we all are now - so scattered and so far apart. We should make as much as we can of Christmas for the time comes only too soon when it becomes a sad anniversary. But it gave me a certain amount of pleasure to look back on a few of the Christmases I have spent.

Now we are well in another year and I pray that it brings us peace.

Arthur has not written since the 18
^th
of December but he said then that he hoped to be allowed to go to Berlin and pay a call for a couple of hours on his cousin Johanna Pulmann. I do not think that he got permission for one of them would have written.

Alice Graeinghoff has written and says that a friend of theirs has been exchanged for an English prisoner and that he is surprised at the bitterness he finds here. He says that he was well treated in the Handforth camp and the men exchanged have written to thank the English government for their treatment. It’s good to read it. If only we could see the end.

The papers are full of conscription in England. Of course I do not know of what it is to consist. But if is anything like they have here, well, revolution is better in my opinion. But of course I get so little news that I can believe. For if you read one thing today it is contradicted in another day or two.

Yesterday I had a couple of friends to coffee. One has a sister in London and the other a brother in Australia. Both have not heard from them for some time and are full of anxiety.

I cannot understand the letters not coming. Surely the members of my family have not left me the whole of Christmas without even a thought to put on paper? It is announced in the papers here how to address a letter to England to assure its safe delivery. Surely something of the kind is done in England to relieve the anxiety of relatives.

Today it is announced in the papers that we must tell how much weight of potatoes we have in the house over twenty pounds. Here in Germany everybody buys their potatoes by the hundredweight at the beginning of winter. I had six hundredweights sent here from the farm so I must announce all I have over the twenty pounds. It is so the government understands how many will be in hand when the new harvest is planted.

We are awaiting the new Income Tax every day and I have heard that the outlanders are to be heavier taxed than the Germans – we shall see.

Lots of callers today as it is Belle’s birthday. Every one of your friends calls and brings you good wishes and a flower or plant. Tomorrow she goes out to supper so I shall have a quiet evening.

I have not been so well again and had a bad heart attack so I am going to a heart specialist in a few days. I seem to be going like mother. My pains remind me so much of her. We will see what a good doctor can do.

Steinoff came last week and says that William goes this month to the military and he must apply for a prisoner to do his work.

Hermenia came to see me and says all is well at home. Frau and Herr Pastor wrote me their greetings – they are very kind indeed.

I also had a Christmas card from Miss Seales, the Californian lady that I helped to get to America. She is now safe and thanks me for letting her have the money. It’s a pleasure to know one can be of help to someone in these bad times. She must be so glad to be amongst her own people again.