1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [340]
The Brigadier left amid cheers, and we set to work upon the remaining turkey. Beer was brought round in buckets and some drank more than was good for them and consequently there was a great deal of merriment. One fellow, noted for his camel-like propensities, was about full when he started, and before dinner was over, he insisted on standing on the table and making a speech. He was not very firm on his feet and several times subsided into the arms of those sitting near him. When he did get up he was met with a regular fusillade of bread, potatoes and bones, but somehow they all missed him and did damage to the innocent. His speech was not a success, but he caused great sport.
Not being fond of beer, I specialised in port. To one unused to it, port plays havoc and for the rest of the evening I was quite happy. After dinner we had a concert given entirely by our own fellows and it was jolly good. I left at nine o’clock and spent the rest of the night at the billet where we again made merry.
There was another concert many hundreds of miles away in the heart of Germany at the prisoner of war camp where Harry Crask had been imprisoned since his capture on the Westhoek Ridge on 8 May. Christmas there was an abstemious affair but, with the help of Red Cross parcels and many parcels from home, there was plenty to eat and even a few luxuries, for the five shilling parcels that relatives were able to send through the good offices of the Daily Mail contained plum cake and sardines and potted meat and chocolate, as well as tea, milk powder and sixty cigarettes. A few braver souls had attempted to make a vicious alcoholic brew from fermented potato peelings, others had managed to bribe a guard to smuggle in a bottle or two of beer, but most were content to munch on chocolate as they watched the entertainment and the mess hall was thick with the fumes of precious cigarettes recklessly chain-smoked in honour of Christmas. It was a good concert and it was a pleasant break in the frustrating monotony of life as a prisoner in Germany.
Life as a prisoner in Holland where a brigade of the Royal Naval Division was interned was hardly less monotonous, but in the camp at Groeningen they did better than prisoners in Germany. The Dutch were more kindly, food was more plentiful and there was no shortage of beer on Christmas Day. News was still scarce for Holland was meticulous in observing the rules of neutrality and there was strict censorship, but Arthus Agius had found a way of getting round it. He was spending his own Christmas on a Greek island, having arrived on Gallipoli as a newly commissioned officer of the Royal Naval Division just in time for the evacuation, but before his departure he had organised a dinner in London for sixteen escapees from Groeningen. There was an embargo on news of those who had succeeded in reaching home, but the Dutch authorities had not thought to censor a formal report of the dinner which Agius sent to the editor of the camp magazine. It appeared in the Christmas edition and, since it concluded with a list of the guests who attended the ‘escapees dinner’, it was of great interest to the men who were left behind.
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