Prisoners of the Kaiser by Ricahrd Van Emden

Author:Ricahrd Van Emden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS027090
ISBN: eBook ISBN| 9781844688500
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Published: 2009-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

BILL EASTON

I was thin, they told me I looked like a skeleton, ragged. But I tried not to worry. You see, a lot of men, I swear, died just of worry and anxiety. They used to say, ‘Young Bill, he doesn’t trouble,’ they thought I didn’t care, but I did. There was no point being miserable and I’ll admit I didn’t expect to last out the war, but I used to say, ‘well, what’s the use in worrying?’

We were digging roads or artesian wells, sinking a pipe down until we touched water. I used to collapse and of course if you collapsed they’d give you a thump and pull you to one side and throw water over you until you came round. I wasn’t right. I was delirious sometimes, so I don’t remember a lot about it. I do recall we went out on road-mending one time and I was just about passing out. I couldn’t lift the pickaxe up so I said to the fellow next to me, ‘I shan’t be able to stick this out much longer, I shall collapse.’ I really thought I would die there. Out of the camp, when there were perhaps just eight or nine of you, that’s where I found the guards knocked you about most, give you a proper clout so you end up on your knees and couldn’t get up. This man, he told me it was a pity I hadn’t got a trade. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘If you were a carpenter or something like that.’ So I said, ‘I’m not a carpenter but I’m an upholsterer.’ He told me several of the lads were working in the village on different jobs that weren’t too bad and that I should put my name down. So I did. I was what the Germans called a Sattler.

A group of five of us went to this village, and as we passed this hotel the guard told me to wait there. A girl came out, friendly looking, and I told her I was a Sattler. She told me to follow her and I was taken into the hotel ballroom which had no floor. At one end of the room was a stack of floorboards. She didn’t speak English and she said something to me that I didn’t understand and she went out and the door banged shut. So I thought to myself, ‘What do I have to do?’ Although I was an upholsterer, my father had been a carpenter for a while and during the school holidays he had refused to let me lounge about and had taught me about working with wood. All the wood had been cut to length and there was every type of saw, plane and hammer, so I decided I couldn’t sit there all day and began to lay this floor and got quite into it.

This lady was Leni Mörrs and she lived at the hotel and quickly made a right fuss of me. There was no one staying at the hotel except the owner, an old lady, and some of her family.

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