The Reckoning by Nathan M. Greenfield

Author:Nathan M. Greenfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

15 December 1916: Fort Rastatt, Germany

INSTEAD OF CONTINUING ON to internment in Switzerland as Douglas had, Laird and the fifty men with him were now quartered in a long, damp tunnel he likened to a sewer. With them were several men with tuberculosis whose coughing grew worse as they lay on the floor without even straw to insulate them from the cold and damp. Breathing was a trial for the other men because of the odours that emanated from the damp and the scores of unwashed men, many, like Laird, with festering wounds.

After the fine food they had eaten in the hotel in Konstanz, the dirty water with (if they were lucky) mouldy vegetable pieces that passed for soup was a special trial—as was the barley in which bugs and worms were intermixed. The strain of living in darkness—for they were not allowed candles—increased their feelings of hopelessness. They became sullen and despondent, and at times even feared one another. “There were no serious quarrels, although there was wrangling and unpleasantness most of the time, and an undercurrent of menacing personal antipathy that we were all afraid of. Each one of us had reached a stage mentally where we could no longer trust ourselves, and it was this distressing lack of confidence that made us suspicious of others,” recalled Laird.”24

But the men did not break. Laird’s health was worse than at Stendal and his stomach emptier, but his depression began to lift. Others too, he noticed, plumbed some inner depth and, like drowning men, bobbed to the surface intent on gulping air and living. Resisting the Germans by holding off the black night of despair and coping with hunger pangs became a source of strength.

This newfound strength did not last from day to day, but rather, had to be found anew each day. It had to be found in the darkness, through the miasma they breathed and with the ever-present gnawing hunger calling each man back to his own all-too-human body and its unfulfilled needs. For these men, the simple act of living, of keeping some Germans tied down by watching them, was a victorious act of war.

Ten days before Christmas, Laird and some of the men were put on a train that took them back to Konstanz, where they ate good, filling soup provided by the Red Cross. An elegant Swiss Red Cross train that would take them out of Germany awaited them.

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