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Updated: May 3, 2025
The prisoners are reduced to subsist upon what meagre rations the authorities choose to dole out to them, and essentially upon what they receive from home. Starvation confronts our compatriots suffering durance vile in Ruhleben. The dawn of each succeeding day is coming to be dreaded with a fear which baffles description because it is unfathomable.
Then let me tell you: at Ruhleben, my friend, my Frenchman at Ruhleben, where I happen to remember very thoroughly the manner in which you treated me. Do you forget, then?
"Henri and Jules our particular Henri and Jules mon Capitaine," called out the sergeant who had been speaking to them a little while before, and who, like the regiment, knew our two heroes thoroughly. "Henri and Jules, who joined us from Ruhleben, and preferred to fight in a battle such as this rather than stay in safety though not in comfort in Ruhleben." "Ah! Henri and Jules, of course.
What a tale of treachery and suffering; what a tale of furious fighting, of gallant deeds, of death, of victory, of wounds, had been wrought by those months of war which had elapsed since that eventful day when Henri and Jules discovered themselves in Berlin, the centre of a hissing, furious crowd, and were hurried to that camp of misery at Ruhleben!
Members of the Embassy would attend these trials, and we endeavoured to see that the prisoners were properly represented. But the Germans often refused us an opportunity to see the prisoners before their trial, or even before their execution. The case of Captain Fryatt is in point. Captain Fryatt who commanded a British merchant ship was captured and taken to the civilian camp at Ruhleben.
This discovery revealed the maddening circumstance that what had been sent out to Ruhleben for free distribution among the prisoners was actually being sold. There was an enquiry which yielded a more or less convincing result according to one's point of view. There was also an outcry over the crates in which these articles were sent to us.
This division of the cost between the communal shop and the common fund brought butter within the reach of those who otherwise would have had to be content with dry bread, because very few of us could have afforded the luxury had Berlin prices prevailed in Ruhleben.
It seemed strange to be treading land again after five months on shipboard. How welcome to see the green fields, the horses at work on the beach, the people in the village, the village itself! How good it all was! We had escaped imprisonment with the enemy, escaped making acquaintance with the notorious Ruhleben of evil fame.
Someone trying to break out of Ruhleben!" shouted the Sergeant bellowed it, in fact when he saw that the guard was nodding his head emphatically. "You mean to tell me that you have stood there all these minutes, and allowed me to read the orders of the day, and to cross-examine you, without giving so much as a hint as to the real cause of the firing of your rifle?
An equally tattered coat was over his shoulders, while his bare feet were thrust into a pair of heavily nailed boots, which had been cleaned perhaps a year before. There was no hat on his head, and, thanks to his swim in the river, his hair which had grown excessively long in Ruhleben hung lankly over his eyes and forehead, producing altogether an appearance not very uncommon in the country.
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