A new _Feldwebel_ who came to the camp seemed to have received strict injunction to look daily at the bars of the windows to make certain that there had been no tampering with them overnight. Thus he had a habit of dropping in at unexpected moments to the library, the dining-hall, or the dormitories, but always with an air of looking for some one or something else. Assuredly he did not wish to impute to us the using upon the windows of anything so unfriendly as a file.
One morning he came suddenly into our room, walked awkwardly and self-consciously to the window, by which was standing a deck chair; then, casting a quick, sidelong glance at the barred pane, he said smilingly in German, “A very good chair,” and so departed.
[Illustration: THE MARIENKIRCHE, BEESKOW]
This _Feldwebel_, by the way, although he arrived in July, came in like a lion, and went out like a lamb, turning out to be the gentlest German of them all. He was black-bearded as Thor or Odin, and at his first parade, on the appearance of the Commandant and staff, he bellowed “_Ach-tung!_” in a stentorian voice, which, if it did not make us shake in our shoes, certainly caused us to smile in our sleeves. Even the camp officers were amused, and Lieut. Kruggel laughed outright. Next morning the poor _Feldwebel’s_ “_Ach-tung!_” was so subdued and so robbed of its virility, that it was more stimulating to our risible faculties than that of the day before. He had obviously been requested to modify his powerful “word of command.”
One day I had been sketching the interior of the Marienkirche at Beeskow, a sentry with loaded rifle sitting by me in the silent church. He informed me that he also was an artist, but with his feet and not his hands, and that he had danced at the London Hippodrome. That night, after roll-call, the German, Lieutenant Stark, expressed a desire to see the drawing.
As it was dark, I practically impelled him for a few paces to the arc-lamp at the gate, at the very moment when three Captains courageously made an effort to pass through the building used as an office, which gives on to the garden, from whence access to the road would have been comparatively easy. A further diversion was created by a Lieutenant falling down in the court as if in a fit, though this was nothing but a feint. The office was occupied by Germans, however, and, softly and politely closing the door behind them, the trio turned back. Captain Brown, by reason of his great stature--he was six feet six inches--was readily recognized, and next morning the three officers were brought up for attempting to escape, and sentenced to three days’ confinement in the “Tower.”