B00D2VJZ4G EBOK (59 page)

At this village a Scotsman was our cook – as we knew to our cost. He soon got fat on what he kept back from our rations and very soon collected hundreds of marks by selling as supper food he had kept back from our dinner. But he was paid in his own coin, for one day all his marks were missing. His suspicions immediately fell on us and, appealing to our guards – all decent fellows – he made us strip, and then searched our clothes. But he never found his money. The German sergeant who watched the proceedings was much amused; we found out that it was he who had taken the money.

With his plausible tongue, this Scotsman won the sympathy of the French woman who lived next door (we were lodged in a house), and she gave him some good dinners which he carried past our very noses with such unctuous remarks as ‘God bless her!’ How I hated him!

I was becoming very weak now and it was evident that the guards noticed it, for they would enter our room every night with the remains of their suppers and, after searching round, would discover me in my corner and put what they had brought in my basin.

A German infantry regiment passed us one day. They seemed very dispirited. In front of the column was a scarecrow of a horse. We were told that it was the regiment’s meat ration. And so it turned out to be. The inhabitants of the village also had their share and, thanks to them, we were given the head and a few ribs.

The sight of an officer passing along the road by which we were working would act on our guards magically. We would be peacefully working when they would suddenly seize us round the throats and shake us like dogs, calling us all kinds of names. This was the kind of treatment the officers delighted to see us subjected to. When they had gone normal relations were resumed by our guards.

It was whilst in this part that I commenced to suffer from a form of dropsy. I would be working in the fields and would suddenly discover that my legs seemed rooted to the ground. I then found that they had swollen to twice their normal size.

One day a German commandant visited us and asked if we had any complaints! We were surprised into silence. Any complaints! One of us ventured to say that we should like to write home, and after a few days we were each given a field card to satisfy us. These cards never reached home.

Home! I tried not to think of it. I did not even know if it still existed. It might have been bombed out of existence for all I knew. Things were bad enough as they were, but to think of home and all it meant made one feel absolutely hopeless.

One day, as I was hoeing, one of the guards came over to me and gently led me away, I did not worry about what was going to happen to me as I was getting past caring for anything, but I was rather surprised when he made me lie down in the shadow of a hedge and told me I was to work no more. All that day I rested in the warm sun and compared the country with the English country and thought how happy I could have been if only I were strong again and not hungry. The next day I could not get up in the morning. I did not want to eat. I only wanted to be let alone, and I had my wish. During the day it seemed as if I had been completely forgotten.

The next day was my birthday. What a birthday! I well remember praying that I might die. Utterly hopeless I had no desire to live. My very body seemed a burden to me.

I did not undress at night, but lay in a kind of stupor, not caring for anything or anybody. But I overheard the others discussing me. A little ginger-haired man whom I disliked for no other reason than that he had a head-wound alive with lice remarked: –

‘He won’t last much longer. He doesn’t wash. He doesn’t undress. He doesn’t do anything. He just lays there. I know what that means.’

I knew what it meant too – and had been hoping for the end, but hearing myself discussed in such a manner awoke what little self-respect and pride I had left. I thought to myself, ‘I’ll show them if I’m done for or not.’

The next morning, although I had eaten nothing for several days, I managed to stumble downstairs and out to the working party. The guards seemed delighted to see me again. Perhaps they did not want to be bothered with the trouble of a funeral. I did not do any work, but the fresh air and the sunshine helped me to regain a little strength.

But it did not last long. Soon I was in hospital in Sedan, so weak that I could not walk; so thin that I could not sit down.

Rifleman Victor Denham joined the London Rifle Brigade at eighteen, and went to France in August 1917. Took part in the battle for Cambrai in November 1917. Shot in the head during the German offensive at Arras, March 1918, and made prisoner of war. Repatriated from Lamsdorf Camp (an unofficial War Prisoners’ Camp), December 1918. Discharged, September 1919
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