Month: September 2019

September 25th 1919

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C H R I S T M A S   T E R M   1 9 1 9

Yesterday saw the start of a new school year.

We are delighted to welcome a number of new staff:

JB Brown BA (Hertford College Oxford), ex-Capt. Royal Scots; J Brucker, ex-Capt. Ox & Bucks Light Infantry; Miss Trevelyan LRAM (Music & Singing); Miss Anderson (Music).

We are also pleased to see the return of two Old Dragons: N Sergent, ex-Lieut. French Army and Rev HW Spurling, ex-CF Hants Regiment.

There are 26 news boys and another 7 in the Junior Department. Our numbers total 182 with 20 in the Junior Department.

To help accommodate this increase we have built on two additions to the School House. The Dining Hall has been increased and at School there are two large new classrooms, formed from an Army Hut (which was purchased over the summer), carefully prepared for the purpose, and two Masters’ rooms at the House, heated by hot water pipes, and lighted by electric light, have also been provided by the same means.

 

Huts such as these have been advertised in the newspapers:

A bargain for £10!

September 22nd 1919

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I n   G e r m a n y   ( 1 9 1 4 – 1 8 )

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – Part 7

Cyril King, having arrived at the Ruhleben Camp when it opened at the end of October 1914, settled in for his first winter in captivity. The next entry from his journal is from January 1915, and describes how life there has developed:

3/1/15. “Everyone is very nice, cheerful and unselfish, watching for opportunities to help other people. It is very cold and we had snow and snowball fights – loathsome institutions, especially when one has no change of clothing! The camp is a perpetual bog as the soil is sand and there is no system of drainage. Everyone walks heavily and slowly about in huge clogs, corduroy trousers and innumerable woollen scarves.

In the mornings the whole camp seems to collect in the middle grandstand – a big sort of tearoom full of counters and benches. A rough stage has been erected along one wall by using the counters as trestles and covering them with planks of floorboards from some of the horseboxes, and we are soon to have concerts and, I hear, even a play. Rehearsals for the former – choruses accompanied by a few instruments – are generally in progress in one corner, while in another some of the men have fitted up a carpenter’s shop and are making badly needed tables and chairs – most energetically to judge by the infernal din which accompanies their efforts. In another corner a few are learning to dance and others to box, while in the middle people smoke and talk and laugh and play chess or study German.

In the evening the great pastime is ‘walking up and down the front’ – the ‘promenade des Anglais,’ which is bounded by the Guardroom, the three grand stands, the ‘tea house’ and the barbed wire – it is about 150 yards long and 20 broad and looks on to the race course.

The rest of the day I play chess (cards being forbidden) and am very good at it – though I know I shouldn’t say so. We have organised inter-barrack matches and all kinds of tournaments.”

September 12th 1919

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I n   G e r m a n y   ( 1 9 1 4 – 1 8 )

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – Part 6

Yesterday morning (October 28th 1914) we were informed that Ruhleben was ready for us, and after much waiting about, and a short railway journey and two of the longest and weariest marches which we have made so far, arrived at 5 o’clock in the afternoon.”

After a three-week interlude at Plötzensee Prison, Cyril King has finally arrived at Ruhleben Camp, set up on a race course to house what was to be some 4-5000 mainly British civilians. He was destined to spend the rest of the war here.

“We sleep on our straw sacks, four on a bed board  and there is no room to put anything… The other occupants of the loft besides L., E., B., M. and Coote from Oxford (who were all at Baden-Baden) are chiefly merchant service officers and seamen and very cheerful and nice. Most of them come from Hamburg and they have great stories about the ‘hulks’ on which they were kept – some of them weeks – among rats and vermin with practically nothing to eat.

The camp consists of 11 long stone stables, fairly close together, a guard room and two other buildings, used by the Germans, three grand stands and a tea house, lying along one side of a race course. In each stable there are 26 horse boxes, about 7 or 8 feet square and containing six camp beds – two (one on top of the other) along each of three walls – and leaving about 4 x 5 feet of free floor space. The ‘lofts’ slope down to the windows and are never more than 8 or 10 feet high; they hold 3 rows of closely touching beds – one down each wall and one in the middle… 

This picture is taken from ‘In Ruhleben, Letters From a Prisoner to his Mother,’ edited by Douglas Sladen in 1917, which shows something similar to what Cyril is describing.

I hear we are to be allowed to march round the racecourse for an hour every day for exercise. No newspapers are allowed except the ‘B.Z. am mittag,’ an afternoon paper which contains much less news than one edition of the ‘Star.’ The canteen is good though and one can buy most things, butter, roll, tea, biscuits, clothes, basins etc., though prices are very high, and I myself am very nearly ‘broke.'”

September 5th 1919

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I n   G e r m a n y   ( 1 9 1 4 – 1 8 )

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – Part 5:

Having left behind his family and the comfort of a Baden-Baden hotel on October 6th 1914, Cyril King had an uncomfortable 36 hours at Rastatt, before he was on his way again:

“The next stage was a weary, and, except for some supper about half way in a refreshment barrack by the side of the railway, a very hungry one. We were over 30 hours in the train and it was so crowded that we had to take it in turns to sit.

We arrived in Berlin at about midnight of the following day, and walked for a good two hours carrying our luggage before we eventually reached our destination. This we thought was to be Ruhleben Camp, and were surprised to find ourselves suddenly in what looked like a palace, but was in reality the waiting-room of Plotzensee convict prison.

All razors, knives and watches were taken off us and we were led into a huge hall containing about 150 big birdcages – made of wire and just big enough to hold a bed, and standing-room along it… We threw ourselves on to our beds at once and slept soundly.

Next morning we woke up with swollen faces and itching bodies – covered with bug bites! There were swarms of little red bugs everywhere and it took us a fortnight, with the help of disinfectant… to get rid of them completely. Whereupon our warders moved us to another part of the prison…

I admit I enjoyed those three weeks. We were given – as in Rastatt – acorn coffee or soup 3 times a day and a third of a black loaf each, and had to wash ourselves and our dishes from one solitary tap; but bribery soon got to work, and before long potted meats, biscuits, chocolate and cigarettes found their way in, while one group of plutocrats actually dined regularly off mutton chops and red wine!

We were allowed an hour’s exercise in the prison yard every morning and were greatly admired by the other convicts for our energy in ‘doubling’ and ‘hopping’ and walking on our toes…

The rest of the day was spent in talking and playing chess, bridge and piquet, washing up dishes and ‘spring cleaning.’ The prison was quite warm and it was a very careless existence!”