He was not so clever as Abel, but he had more time for spying and was more persistent. It always seemed to me to be worth keeping on fairly decent terms with these two. It was only necessary to refrain from being offensive to be on better terms than most people in the fort.
It was very different with that swine of a _Feldwebel_. He never walked about without a revolver in his pocket, and he never came alone down any dark passage; "et il avait raison," as the French said, as he had several pretty narrow shaves with brickbats as it was. At one time those tins and jars, such as butter, jam, quaker-oats, which had been packed and sealed in a shop, were passed over to us unopened, and only home-made and home-packed articles were examined. Later on, however, everything had to be turned out on a plate and the Germans kept the tin.
Although very nearly all our parcels arrived eventually, they used to come rather irregularly, and several times as many as twenty to thirty parcels would arrive for the six of us who were in one room. Consequently, if all the food had been opened immediately, much of it would have gone bad before we could eat it. To obviate this difficulty, the Germans made shelves in the parcel office, and each room or mess could leave there the food which it did not need for the moment.
At first sight it would seem that this arrangement would make the smuggling through of forbidden goods almost impossible, or at any rate that our difficulties would be greatly increased. In reality the business was simplified. As long as we knew in which tin or small package the map, compass, or what-not was coming, we could make fairly certain, by methods which I shall describe later, of getting it without it ever being opened by the Germans.
After _Appell_ all the fort except the English had dinner. This was the hour when the potato, wood, oil, and coal stealing fatigues did their duty. For some weeks our French orderly used to steal potatoes for us as we needed them. He knew the ropes very well, as he had been in the fort for more than a year. One day, however, he said that this stealing in small quantities was a mistake, and that it would be safer to have one big steal once a month or so. Four of us, under the leadership of Carpentier, stole eight small sacks without much difficulty. It was just a matter of knowing the habits of our jailers and timing it accurately. The Germans were not so suspicious in those days as they became later. There was a small trap-door 6 feet up the wall in the central passage, which Carpentier knew how to open. He got in, filled the bags, and passed them out to us. To carry the full bags back to our rooms we had to pass under the eyes of a sentry. But that is just the best of a German sentry. He had had no orders to spot prisoners carrying bags, and he had also no imagination, so he took no notice.
