Christmas as a Prisoner of War
in Germany.
144 THE YPRES TIMES
FROM THE ACCOUNT OF MAJOR BURGOYNE, ROYAL SCOTS
FUSILIERS.
Condensed by Beatrix Brice.)
I WAS taken prisoner during the First Battle of Ypres, and invalided to
Switzerland on December 23rd, 1917; so spent three Christmases as a captive
in Germany. Although the Hun naturally did nothing to brighten the festival
for us, we were able to buy geese and turkeys that first yearfood still being
plentiful in Germany. We also made some attempt at decoration with coloured
papers and holly.
From the religious side, Ave all kept the feast, as in every camp I was in
prisoners of various nationalities made their own little chapels. The Russians
were lucky in having a number of priests in their ranks and a really wonderful
choir.
I and my room-mate decided to give a party the first year. We shared a
10-ft. square room by virtue of our rank. We had a German goose, 47 plum
puddings sent us by friends in England, and plenty of water. Among our gifts
from home were six bottles of lime juice, rejected for the party. But. lying in bed
and pondering over Christmas Eve in Scotland, a light flashed into my mind. I
dashed to the bottles, unscrewed the topsHail! Santa Claus, no lime juice, but
good John Haig. This was a great feast, indeed, as we crept from bed to bed
dosing our fellow officers with the good stuff, using the bottle capsules as liqueur
glasses.
The next day our Christmas party was a real success, crowned by excellent
port discovered in a bottle labelled hair wash.
My 1915 Christmas was spent in an evil camp in Prussia, under very depressing
conditions, and nobody could attempt to mark the day.
My next, in 1916, in another camp, was equally dismal, but here, in a forest
not far from Berlin, we were allowed a fortnightly cinematograph showa dull
affair, but something to break the dreary monotony. The operator was a huge and
enormously fat Hun, who used to bring his show in a colossal property basket,
which, on arrival at our barbed wire entanglement, was closely searched for
contraband. But as he became known this formality practically ceased. Here was
our chance. By this time, December 1916, the Germans were extremely short of
fats, and our little tins of butter and lard from home went a long way in purchasing
small privileges. The Scottish officers decided to attempt a grand Christmas party
at all costs, and at the same time discover if food was really almost extinct in
Berlin, for I had not been issued with one single ounce of meat or green food for
a year.
An application to the Commandant to keep lights on for an extra hour on
Christmas Eve was refused; but no matterthe guards were the important people,
and we relied on our butter to ease the wheels. After weeks of heavy bribery our
cinema operator and a German corporal each agreed to play the part we had cast
for them. The day before the party the corporal took his cart to the station for
our parcels from home, and returned with all the apparatus we required hidden
withintable cloths, glass, plate, and dinner service hired from a hotel.
After dark, our fat cinema man arrived, anxiously watched by the hosts from
behind trees. Safely in, his huge basket disclosed neither cinema nor films. Out
came dozens of ducks, a huge sirloin of beef (no horse for us), three-score German
