Mexborough and Swinton Times May 11, 1918
In Germany.
Mexboro’ Man’s Interesting Story.
Roast Cat a Luxury.
The Crown Prince and the Australian.
A Record of Misery and Hardship.
At a concert held on Saturday evening, the primitive Methodist School, Mexborough and distinguished by the presentation to private Clement Allen (West Riding regiment) of the Military Medal he won in France 12 months ago, Seaman Harry Bucknall (Royal Naval Dept) Quarry St, Mexborough gave an account of his experiences during three years internment in Germany. The concert was in aid of the local prisoners of war fund.
The following is a summary of Seaman Bucknall’s deeply interesting narrative narrative:—
Seaman Bucknall went out with the Royal Naval Division to the relief of Antwerp in Sept., 1914. He was wounded and captured, and with other men, some of them badly wounded, he was thrown into a hay wagon, and the party were ultimately taken by trained to Berlin.
There were 2.5 of them in the party, and they lay for some time on the platform of the station in Berlin. A party of German wounded arrived by the same train, and the Red Cross people bestowed upon these every possible attention, pressing comforts of all descriptions upon them.
A member of the British party as for water, and a “humorous” German nurse came and sprinkled a little on each man’s nose! When they reached hospital the German doctors set to work to operate on them. ‘They said they were short of chloroform, and one ‘unfortunate man had his right leg amputated without anaesthetic. He died under the operation.
Seaman Bucknall was in this hospital for two months, and was transferred to camp before his wound was healed. At this camp an Englishman named Liversedge was shot in the chest by a sentry, a man who had lost a brother in the fighting on the Western front. The sentry was fried, and was supposed to get fifteen years’ imprisonment, but he was seen about the camp a month afterwards. At the next camp Seaman Bucknall was a fellow prisoner with Pte. Lonsdale, of Leeds, who was sentenced to death for an assault on the guard. At this camp it was common for famished prisoner to be punished with close confinement for stealing turnips from the fields.
Seaman Bucknall was very glad shake the dust of this camp from his feet, which he did in April. 1915. At the next camp he saw two ‘Russians tied to a tree for an attempted escape. A big Russian Sergeant cut them down and there was a regular melee. The guard brought up machine guns and swept the camp with them. The prisoners took to the huts, hut the huts were riddled with bullets and there were many casnaltie9. Afterwards the commandant apologise to the British prisoners, and said that if he could have distinguished them from the Russians he would have done so. At this camp Seaman Bucknall got a good hiding, 14 days imprisonment, and a transfer to another camp, for refusing to work.
At the next camp he British party 250 strong refused to work until they had been given some food, and so they would forfeit their lives rather than work. However, the Matter was compromised. They were given food, and some of them went to work. Seaman Bucknall did not, and his stay in this camp was short.
About this time he was very ill: is wound was giving him trouble, and before long lie found himself in what was by courtesy called an invalid camp. There were three Scotsmen there who volunteered to work for the sake of the exercise. They got tired of it, however, and asked to be relief, seeing that nobody else in the camp was working. The rest of the camp, however, insisted on their rights as invalids. One day the N.C.O.’s had a football match, and, as is well-known, N.C.O.’s are exempt from compulsory labour. The commandant next day sent an’ order to the unlucky privates, who’ bad not taken part in the match, to the effect that as they were well enough to play football they must be well enough, to work.
There was humour in the situation, for the sergeants, who, however, to do them justice, did not think much of the joke. Some of the men were sent out on scavenging duty, others went to a coal mine, and a third party, which included Seaman Bucknall, were sent to a cement factory. They had a miserable time there. They were starved and bullied; the dust from the cement got on their lungs, and before long they were thoroughly ill.
They succeeded in seeing a doctor—four of them—an Englishman, two Scotsmen, and an Irishman. The doctor patted the Irishman on the back and dismissed the other three as “schwine.” He told them that he had a brother interned in London, and he knew he was having a rough time. Bucknall replied that he did not believe he was, and in any case they couldn’t help it. Bucknall this time had trouble with his knee, and the doctor wanted to operate on it. Bucknall refused to allow him to, and the doctor, in a rage, asked if he did not consider him as skilled as an English doctor.
Bucknall replied that he might be, but he had seen something of operations on prisoners, and he wasn’t having any. The doctor promptly marked him fit for labour, and he was sent to a “strafe” camp, where he and another Englishman were herded with some particularly dirty Russians. There was no soap for any of them, but the Englishmen laved themselves in water whenever they had the opportunity, and the Russians were well content to forego the luxury of the bath. This was in the summer of 1916, and Capt. Newton and some English Naval Prisoners from the battle of Jutland arrived in the camp about this time. Through the good offices of Capt. Newton, Seaman Bucknall and his comrade were transferred to the huts of the English sailors. Later 150 of them were sent to Frankfort-on-Oder, where the same petty cruelties were practised upon them.
One bitter winter’s day, as they were struggling to make tea out of an old tin can, a German general came along and kicked their gypsy fire over, telling them that they were liable to be sentenced to death for lighting the fire at all. About this time they were all reduced to a shirt each, and that very dirty. They asked for leave to wash their underclothes, and the commandant told them to write home for a fresh supply. They did so and a lady and gentleman in London, who had adopted Seaman Bucknall, sent him a complete rig-out. He was in the parcel office when it arrived, and the man in charge handed him one garment. He demanded the lot, saying it was his property. The solitary garment was promptly snatched back, and Seaman Bucknall was told that he would have nothing, for his impudence. He appealed to the commandant, who confirmed the action of his subordinate, and. gave Bucknall fourteen days’ cell for his “cheek.”
The soup, which was the main article of diet at this camp, was chiefly composed of dandelions and clover and frogs. Bucknall and a comrade, however, supplemented their ration with a cat. They came upon a Frenchman one day eating roasted cat, and they were so ravenous that they asked for a little. It tasted good to them, and soon after they found that a Russian prisoner was keeping a cat and feeding it on the scanty ration of milk allowed to a sick prisoner. They quietly abstracted the cat -from the custody of the Russian, and under the direction of the Frenchman they scientifically killed and cooked it, and feasted on it. The Russian made a fuss about it and, reported it to the guard. They were obliged to confess to the guard that they had killed and eaten the cat, but the German, who was not such a bad sort, and had, moreover, an-eye to the main chance, condoned the offence on their showing him where the skin was buried, and he took the skin and sold it in the town for two marks.
Soon after that Seaman Bucknall was sent with a party into Austria, where they were treated even more unkindly than they had been in Germany. There was great curiosity about them, for they were the first British prisoners to make their appearance in Austria, and many high officials came to look at them, but their life was a continual round of blows and insults and starvation. They refused to work, and were back at Frankfort in less than six weeks.
Then Seaman Bucknall resolved to make a clash for liberty. He provided himself with six Oxo cubes and a packet of German cigarettes, and slipped off from a stone quarry one evening. He was free for three days, but then he was caught one night as he was stealing through a village. When they got him back to camp the commandant asked him why they had attempted to escape, and he replied with a grin, “It was my place to attempt to escape, and it was your place to catch me.”
He made another attempt soon asked, when he heard that he was going to be sent to a coal-mine. This time he was three weeks at liberty. He had provided himself with some money and some civilian clothing, but he knew no German, and dared not attempt to buy food. So he kept to the woods, living on cabbages and turnips and water until he was in an advanced stage of starvation, and was obliged to give himself up.
He went to hospital after this, began to get lightheaded. He had the wit to turn his condition to good account, before long he got himself certified as a mental case, and was sent to an asylum at Brandenburg. Here a man from Sheffield, with a wife and six children, committed suicide because of the ill-treatment which had been submitted. It was at Brandenburg that an English sailors deliberately suffered to roast alive in a burning, and his fellow prisoners, who ran to the rescue, held off with bayonets. Seaman Bucknall witnessed the incident. On the following day the Commandant horse him why he had been sent to Brandenburg, and he replied with artistic imbecility that he had “come to be in charge.”
Five months later he was put them through exchange, and he left in January of this year, one of a party of 300. At the station the Crown Prince of Germany saw them off and spoke to a little group of maimed flying officers, passing a cigar case round. He then strolled on the platform, and was accosted by a private, mostly for a cigarette. He refused of course, but entered into conversation with a blind Australian. He asked him what he intended to do when he got back. “Oh, I don’t know,” said the Australian, “probably take a barrow and a bit of hawking.” The Crown Prince regarded the man seriously, said, “Aren’t you sorry now that you were fool enough to come over and join the British Army?”
“No,” said the Australian, shortly: “I don’t know that they’ve any use for me, but if they want me I’m ready to join up again.” The Crown Prince walked away looking very thoughtful.
“I want to tell you,” said Seaman Bucknall there is more food in Mexborough today and there is the whole of the great city of Berlin. You don’t see any food shops open there. At mealtimes the shopkeepers and the publicans and everybody else are lined up at the street corners with a basin for soup. They have that for dinner every day, with slices of black bread. You don’t see anything in the shop windows but plants. Cigarettes are a penny each there; a tablet of soap will cost you half a sovereign, a pound of carbolic soap 25 marks.”
Seaman Bucknall added that the return journey to England was accomplished without incident, and when he got to London he was pulled round splendidly with a diet suited to his starved and exhausted condition.