[From Time Stood Still by Paul Cohen-Portheim]

V HUTS, HILL, AND HOSPITAL

AFTER about a fortnight I began to feel restless. I had got to know all the people who seemed worth while, I was getting tired of lying in the sun all day, I wanted to work. I had, in the last few years before the war, evolved a peculiar kind of miniature-painting and lost interest in all realistically representative work. These paintings were done on parchment, a Chinese ink linedrawing serving as a basis for glowing colour-schemes of pure purples, blues, reds, etc., with a good deal of silver and gold. They were Oriental in inspiration and the technique influenced by Persian miniature-painting, but what they represented was purely my own, a mass of fantasies often unintelligible even to myself. I had always surrounded this work with quite a ritual : I had to feel in the proper mood for it (which generally meant the early morning hours), all had to be quiet around me ; I used a certain table, certain pens or brushes only, and I preferred a certain room to work in. How could I take up my work here! But I felt I must try, for I could not bear empty idleness any longer, it would drive me insane. So, rather desperately, I made my first attempt. The hut had but one table and its inmates sat round it every evening, all day in wet weather (we were getting some rainy days then) and half the day in fine weather. They talked, they read, they quarrelled, they played cards. That was the worst, for they heartily banged their cards on the table, and the table shook. If I was just doing a stroke with my pen or putting on a spot of colour with my brush they would go astray if the table shook, and if a single one went astray the picture was done for, for nothing can be erased or altered on parchment. But I managed, for I felt I had to manage because it meant such a lot to me ; it meant that I could continue my inner life in spite of all outer circumstances, it meant defying the world to do its worst - and God knows what failure would have meant to me. So I managed to work, some days at least. I sat there waiting till the table was stable again after a shock and - what was more trying - stopping work when a shock was to be foreseen. Some men were interested in what I was doing, some even refrained voluntarily from banging the table, but such proofs of goodwill were rare

The atmosphere of Knockaloe was changing rapidly, relations had already begun to get strained. The moneyless distrusted all the moneyed and suspected them of working their own ends by bribery and corruption, but they were by no means united amongst themselves. The sailors loathed the waiters and barbers : ' You're a lot of pimps,' one red-haired sailor assured them every evening, and enlarged at length on the subject. But to the waiters, etc., the sailors were uneducated brutes. Nor was the more opulent minority united any longer, they had first split on the question of the 'anarchist orator,' their politics divided them, the warlike fire-eaters hated the more level-headed or pacifist who in their turn despised them. The camp was breaking up into hostile factions. As soon as it rained the clay soil became impassable, everyone sheltered inside the but and there was quarrelling going on between some people or other nearly all the time. They had nothing else to do, poor things, but grumble or quarrel! They hated the camp by now, they knew that release was out of the question, but the advantages of other camps assumed ever greater proportions in their imaginations. Wakefield in particular became a name to conjure with, and life there a prolonged week-end party at some great country mansion. But of course, one would never get there, and I gave it little thought, though I had put my name on the list of those who desired to go there on that first day in Knockaloe which already seemed infinitely removed. I still thought Knockaloe quite pleasant when the sun shone; we were now marched twice a week to a hill close by which had been surrounded by wire and was to serve as a playground. There was real grass there, a wide view, splendid air. All sorts of games were played; football of sorts, I remember, amongst others, and that hill is the birthplace of German boxing. Boxing was unknown in Germany before the war, the first boxing lessons to some of the future professionals were given there by men who had learnt it in England. Yes, in fine weather it was not a bad place, but it rained very frequently now, it poured outside, it was damp inside the lightly-built huts; the moisture came up through the badly joined boards of the floor. I caught a bad cold.

One morning I awoke with what must have been very high fever. I was too dazed to realize what was happening as I was carried out of the hut on a stretcher, but when I did realize my surroundings I discovered myself in the Camp Hospital, of which I had heard awful tales. I suppose I had grippe though that name, which covers so many diseases and symptoms the doctors do not understand and cannot cure, did not come into use until the epidemic of 1918, which killed more people than the war had done. I was given aspirin, and on the second day I felt fully conscious again and well enough to get interested in my new surroundings. Being in hospital was truly much worse than being in one's accustomed hut.

It was a but like all the others, only it had a w.c. at one end. It contained two parallel rows of beds and nothing else. It lay on a road outside the compound though inside the camp, and its inmates were allowed no intercourse with anyone outside the hospital. There was at that time (things may have changed later) one solitary doctor or medical officer to look after the health of all the thousands of prisoners. Needless to say, he was terribly overworked and had no time to attend to individual cases that were not extremely urgent. The nursing of the patients and the care of the ward were left to a number of men chosen from such prisoners as had been Heilgehilfen, that is to say, barber-surgeons, or who pretended to some experience of nursing. Their control and power over the sick was as good as unlimited, for when the doctor paid one of his rapid visits one of these men would accompany him on his round, serve as an interpreter and prevent direct communication. That, at least, was what the sick man in the bed next to mine told me when the 'nurse ' had left the room. The poor fellow, a sailor, was terribly ill with some disease of the bones which necessitated operations impossible to perform there. He had lain there for weeks waiting to be moved to an operating hospital and he had lost all hope. Maybe that his was really a hopeless case and that there would have been no object in moving him and operating on him, but that was what he had been told and what he believed, and so he lay there cursing all: the people who had made the war, the English who were letting him rot and die ; but worst of all he hated the nurses. ' What is the matter with you? ' he asked me. ' Nothing much,' I said, ' I shall go back to the camp in a day or two.' He stared at me and started a loud and prolonged laugh. ' You go back tomorrow! ' he cried, ' you will be here a good long time, believe me.' ' But why? ' I asked in surprise. ' Because you have money,' he explained as if he were talking to a child. One's life there, he said, was unbearable if one had no money, they just took no notice of you at all. Every little service had to be paid for. But the moneyed were few, therefore they were very precious to the nurses, and their one idea was to keep them there as long as ever possible. As to the doctor, it was no use counting on him, even if one could talk to him (many of them knew no English) there was no chance of doing so ; he just heard the report of the nurse, told him what to do and went on. ' You can believe me,' he said, ' you will live here while the war lasts and I shall die here long before it is over.' Imaginings of a diseased brain? Possibly. I tried the nurse in the evening. ' I am quite well enough to go back to my compound again,' I said, 'I would like to go to-morrow.' ' That is quite out of the question, you are much too ill,' he said curtly and went away. I thought the matter over during a restless night, and the next morning I got up and dressed-which did not worry the nurse at all. Then I went and stood outside the hospital-which one was allowed to do to get fresh air, and leant against the wall. I had decided to wait for the doctor, and after I had waited five hours or more I saw him approaching and walked up to him. ' I am quite well, again,' I said, 'and would like to return to my compound. I have had a little fever, but it has quite gone now.' ' In that case you may go back,' he said indifferently. 'Would you be kind enough to give me a written order,' I asked, ' it is apparently not easy to leave this place without one.' He gave me a quick look, but he asked no questions, poor fellow, he had enough to worry him, no doubt, without going out of his way for more trouble. He scribbled something on a piece of paper and gave it me.

I thanked him and went back to lie on my bed. When the nurse came round in the afternoon I casually remarked ' I am going back to my camp to-night.' He grinned sarcastically : ' You don't say so ! Quite a mistake, I think.' ' Hardly,' I replied, showing him the precious scrap of paper. He was furious but impotent: ' Well,' he said gruffly, ' what are you waiting for? ' ' Only for the pleasure of your company, because you have to accompany me to the gate, you know.' I said farewell to the poor sailor and promised to do my best for him. I don't know whether it was due to my agitation, but apparently he was sent off to be operated on a few days later - though I never heard what the result had been. I left my most unwilling companion at the gates of my compound. I felt - absurdly - that I was once more free and I prayed but for one thing: never to be ill again in camp! I met all my camp-acquaintances as if they were most intimate friends from whom I had been separated for years; I was overjoyed to be back amongst them; I was grateful for what seemed freedom, security, and human fellowship by comparison.

After that interlude I should probably have been qüite happy at Knockaloe for a good long time, but fate had decided otherwise. I had only been back a few days when a list was published giving the names of the prisoners whose desire to go to Wakefield had been granted, and my name was on that list. There were sixty in all, and fifty-nine of them were overjoyed at their good luck. But I felt curiously depressed. We instantly became objects of envy and hatred to all others, and I was almost inclined to share their point of view. I felt I was leaving them in the lurch, that there should not have been 'gentlemen's camps.' I felt great regret at tearing myself away from Knockaloe. All of which was no doubt illogical and sentimental, but the fact remains all the same. At Wakefield the men who had come with me from Knockaloe were furious with me for speaking almost tenderly of that place, for it is part of the psychology of internment camps to consider anyone a ' traitor ' who finds anything but martyrdom in any of its aspects.

Much envied, greeted by few, sullenly ignored by most the sixty passed out the gates of Knockaloe Camp the following morning, and the second journey into the unknown began.

Discussion

The admission into and out of the Knockaloe camp hospital would appear to be very sparse in this period - by 1916 such records are very useful in confirming presence in the camp. At this time there would be only one camp hospital, that in compound 5 of Camp I hence his comments about his need to return to his camp.

Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The Editor HTML© F Coakley , 2021