During the latter part of the autumn of 1917, many rumours had been current in camp that arrangements had been made between England and Germany for the exchange of prisoners, or rather, the internment of prisoners of more than eighteen months captivity, on either side, in Holland. It sounded too good to be true, and not much notice was taken of it. However, in the following January, it became an actual fact. Amid intense excitement, a list was posted up of those officers captured at the very beginning of the war, to be transferred to Holland. A small party of these men, all regular officers, left a week later, and from then on, further parties left more or less regularly every week.
Letters received from these early arrivals in Holland, describing the wonderful reception they had from the hospitable Dutch and their almost Arcadian existence in Scheveningen and the Hague, made us, one and all, unbearably impatient to follow in their footsteps.
In May, 1918, after almost two years in captivity, I experienced the joy of seeing my name on the board for transfer. Never shall I forget the excitement that followed. Packing up my goods and chattels, the disposal of furniture – most of which was given to newcomers – and articles that were of no further use to me, the farewell parties, and, finally, leave-taking.
Marching out of the gate of Holzminden camp with fourteen or fifteen other fortunate beings, under a heavy guard, with the prospect of freedom ahead – it was a wonderful feeling! And yet, in many ways, it was not altogether without sorrow that I was bidding good-bye to my prison. I was leaving there behind the bars and barbed wire many friends – men whom I had come to know intimately; and new prisoners destined to spend months, and possibly years, of depressing and monotonous existence – prisoners who had not yet become acclimatised to the unnatural life, and who were thus less able to bear the confinement and continuous petty “strafing” than those of us who had learned the “tricks” of Gerangenenschaft and become hardened to the daily contact with “frightfulness.”
We took train to Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) where we spent two nights, and then the final journey to the frontier – a journey of perhaps three hours, and yet full of glorious adventure. At Venlo, the frontier town, the guards left us. It was difficult to realize that we were free – and yet the realisation brought a feeling of exhilarating relief – as if a colossal weight had been removed from our shoulders. We looked out of the windows of the train at the landscape, hungry for the feel of the earth beneath our feet; the trees and the flowers; to stand in the grass and open out our arms and say: “I am free!”
Across the border, the train stopped again, and several British men and women joined us. They were members of the reception committee, some of them old prisoners, come to meet us, and to take us to our destination.
I cannot describe adequately the feeling of awe and veneration with which I regarded the ladies of the party. To me they were something more than human, and their voices when they spoke were wonderful! I never imagined that human voices could be so gentle and so sweet.
The journey to Scheveningen seemed endless. How different everything seemed! How much more beautiful, even the humblest of cottages appeared. Even the trees and fields were richer and the foliage more luxuriant; the air fresher and cleaner!!
We arrived at Scheveningen, a suburb of the Hague, and the one and only sea-side resort in Holland – at about eight o’clock in the evening – and the moment I stepped out of the train I lost all count of time and sense of place – my mind became a blank – my vision a haze! All I can remember is walking along the platform of the station between two lines of people, densely packed, with cheering and handclapping dinning my ears. Out into the street, full of people, to a large building, where I was placed in a chair in a sort of garden lounge. Up till this time everything had been a blur – I simply had no idea where I was, or what, or why! I was just walking in a dream. I have a hazy recollection of being taken into a large hall, also crowded with people, men and women, of someone giving a speech of welcome from a sort of dais, and reading a telegram from the King, expressing his pleasure at our release and the hope that our captivity had had no ill effects on our health – or something of the sort. This gentleman, I learned later, was the British Ambassador.[i] My impression of all this business is just a mass of hands, and greetings from old prisoner friends I had known about twenty years before!
In the middle of all this mental whirl, a hand grasped my arm, and I was dragged through the crowded room, and out of the door into a waiting cab. I felt a sense of extreme relief, for, with my dirty, ragged prison clothes and unshaven chin, I had a sort of dim idea that I was not fit to be in such company – men and women in evening clothes and all around me the glare and the glitter of lights, and music, and polished floors and gay uniforms of a strange pattern.
In the cab I managed to pull myself together and collect my wits. My friend turned out to be one of my old cronies – a young regular officer whom I first got to know at Crefeld. We drove into the Hague, to a large restaurant, where my friend ordered a sumptuous dinner. By this time I had quite regained my senses, and could take an intelligent interest in my surroundings. I recognized, seated at various tables, several of the old timers – almost unrecognisable in smart new uniforms and with an air of sanity about them that was quite foreign to me! They all looked “civilised” which somehow seemed odd and unnatural. Most of them came over and greeted me very heartily, and as each one insisted on having a drink with me to celebrate my liberation, it was not very long before I dropped back into the original state of fogginess. I have no recollection of how or when the dinner ended. I awoke the next morning to find myself in a comfortable bed, in a pleasant room, and “Van” (one of my Holzminden room-mates with whom I had messed the last month and with whom I had traveled on the last journey) cheerily bidding me get up and taste the joys of freedom.
I was billeted in the Hotel Royal, with about two hundred other internes. My first day was mainly spent in walking in and out of the front door of the hotel, simply for the joy of being able to walk out without a string of Bosches hanging round my neck.
It was a wonderful experience. It was the nearest approach to heaven that I shall ever get.
I was just six months in Holland. Had it not been for homesickness, and the feeling that we were out of the war, life would have been one long holiday.
The only drawback was the food question. Owing to the British blockade and the activities of the U-boats, meat was practically unobtainable, and we simply lived on fish – fish three times a day, till we got absolutely fed up and sick to death of the smell and the taste of it.
We were allowed complete freedom within a radius of ten miles of the Hague. After two months at the Hotel Royal I obtained permission from the Senior British Officer to move into rooms in the city, for by this time I had established myself in a studio there, and had got into touch, through the Senior British Officer, with a firm of art publishers in Amsterdam for whom I was doing quite a lot of work, as well as work for other concerns, and for our own papers and magazines published in the Hague. I was also able to send drawings home to The Bystander, a London periodical which had reproduced several of my drawings and cartoons while I was in England, after my return from the Dardanelles.
As a further aid in my work, I was given the privilege of wearing civilian clothes, and special leave granted me to visit publishers in Amsterdam, which in the normal course was out of bounds.
The wearing of civilian clothes was a joy, after nearly four years in uniform, and I revelled in my trips to Amsterdam, two or three days at a time, which enabled me to see something of the country, and to be entirely alone – a civilian once more.
The summer passed very quickly and pleasantly. I made many friends amongst the Dutch and Belgian refugees in the Hague, who were all extremely kind to us. Although my days were fully occupied with work, I found time to take part in many of the social activities both in the Hague and at Scheveningen. The British Amateur Dramatic Society was revived and a play was produced in the leading theatre of the Hague – “The Geisha”, in which I took part, and I was called upon to design the settings and costumes of a concert party organized by the interned officers, which made several successful tours through Holland.
Besides the officers – about two hundred of us – there were over five hundred non-commissioned officers interned in Scheveningen, as well as members of the Naval Division sent to Antwerp at the beginning of the war, and driven into Holland by the first German advance through Belgium.
The German interned prisoners were quartered in Rotterdam, but many of them came to the Hague in search of trouble, on which occasions some lively scenes were enacted between them and our own N.C.O.’s. We knew as a fact of several bodies that were fished out of the canals after such encounters.
One memorable day, a party of about a hundred and fifty Huns descended on the capital, with the object of showing these Schweinhund Englӓnder what stuff the sons of the Fatherland were made of. Unfortunately, however, our N.C.O.’s somehow got wind of the plot, and quickly occupied various strategic positions in a certain broad and shadowy thoroughfare. As the affair was supposed to be strictly “on the quiet” no official reports were given out as to casualties, but the city ambulance men had a pretty busy evening. The Huns never came again.
On the whole, both sides behaved pretty well as a rule, as scraps were strictly forbidden by the Dutch authorities, but it was a ticklish situation for all concerned, and it was extremely difficult to keep up a dignified attitude when passing German officers in the street, particularly as they were an arrogant and swaggering lot. However, their manners made them look silly and their arrogance amused us more than irritated us – which was perhaps just as well.
Immediately the Armistice was signed, the interned prisoners were sent home in large batches, the first boatload leaving the following day. I left Holland on the 20th of November, 1918. It was a great home-coming.
[i] Sir Walter Beaupré Townley, ambassador to the Netherlands 1917-19.
Reported Missing 