September 20, 1914.

It is exactly a month since we were taken prisoner. Here is the great event of this day of jubilee. It is a culinary event. None but the famished could appreciate it.

I dressed hastily, for I had to be upon the upper slopes at seven o’clock. I had an appointment with a peasant woman, small, thin, with scanty hair, who comes here from time to time to cut the grass. Yesterday she brought me two pounds of sugar. The price was sixty pfennig. I gave her a mark, telling her to keep the change for her two girls. These latter, working bare foot in the damp grass, rewarded me with a profusion of reiterated Danke schÖn, and I had said to myself that they were good folk. Acting on this impression, I commissioned them to buy chocolate to the value of three marks, to be delivered next day at seven o’clock. Morgen frÜh, sieben Uhr. This matter having been settled, I took possession of the wheelbarrow, heavy with damp grass, and, as fast as I could, followed by the three breathless Bavarians, I trundled my load as far as the guardhouse, nearly slipping a dozen times on the smooth slopes.

Here I am then at seven o’clock to keep the appointment. From this spot there is a view over the entire fort and the huge plain of Ingolstadt. A thin haze limits the horizon. White vapours rise from the Danube. Some factory chimneys behind the town are slowly vomiting their black plumes straight up into the foggy sky. Not a stir in the air. The houses on the plain have a liliputian aspect, seeming lost in the immensity.

There was no one in the upper courts, no one on the slopes. How pleasant it was in this damp solitude. Church bells in the neighbouring villages were ringing for mass. It was raining steadily—a gentle, quiet rain. I took shelter beneath a parapet and waited. Close at hand a poor little acacia was softly dripping. Since I left for the war, this was the first time I had begun the day quite alone. The “Our Father” mounted to my lips. I prayed for France, for all the soldiers of the VÖlkerkrieg. I prayed for my own dear ones … God, France, AndrÉe.…

Still the woman did not come. My coat was drenched. I was hungry. I made up my mind to abandon my fruitless errand.

In the casemate it was just like any other morning. Each one of us pushes back against the wall the truss of straw which the previous night he had spread out to make his bed, arranging it to form a rectangle, and covering it with a Bavarian rug. Thus, round the “square” we have two rows of low couches, greyish brown in colour, provided by way of cushions with our knapsacks padded with our French rugs. The two chambermaids—to-day they are Sabatier and Ancey—sweep the floor and trim the lamp. When the work is finished our casemate looks almost coquettish.

Now Guido returns from mass. Standing silent in the draughty doorway, he smokes his first cigarette. I instantly perceive that he has an idea, and ask for information. He thinks of nothing less than commemorating the melancholy jubilee of our capture by a cup of chocolate. A great thought, but difficult to realize! I hesitate. But Guido, egged on by hunger, is resolute. Knowing that I am on good terms with the kitchen, without further discussion he gives me a mess-tin and a few sticks of Suchard, saying, “You can manage it all right.” Doubtfully I make my way to the KÜche. I open the door. A cloud of steam and smoke rushes out, enwraps me, and almost chokes me. In this fog I knock up against a Norman from the Auge valley—“Marie, the scullerymaid.” Without explanation I hand over what I am carrying. “That’s all right!” he says. I return to the casemate. “All well?” asks Guido. “All well,” I answer. In a few minutes Marie, alias Auguste, appears. He has the mien of a conspirator! Beneath his stained and greasy tunic he conceals as well as he can the hot vessel. With a secret air he says: “Here it is!” “Bravo!” I exclaim. But can this be my mess-tin? It is quite black, like the bottom of a cooking pot. The tin has melted and run into warty drops half-way up. Yes, it is really my mess-tin; but what a baptism of fire it must have experienced! Never mind. In a trice Guido makes a cunning hole in the straw to keep it hot and to conceal the windfall. Hurrah! everything is ready.

In the casemate, stretched out on our blankets, we all await the dinner-hour.

“Room 17!” comes the cry from without. We leap to our feet. Two by two, as is the custom in German barracks, we make our way to the kitchen—a long procession of individuals who chatter impatiently in the dark and evil-smelling passages. When we reach the happy door we are arrested by the order, “Halt.” We have to wait until those of room 16 have been served and dismissed. Now comes the moment. “Seventeen, enter!” orders Dutrex. We defile in front of the cauldron, and each man in turn holds out his bowl to the cook. This last, Davit, an Angevin, wearied of doing the same thing five hundred times in succession, handles the great ladle mechanically, absorbed in his own thoughts. His arms and shoulders are bare, and one cannot doubt that he has the torso of the Farnese Hercules.

One by one, hastily and yet cautiously, we return to the casemate. Reclining in Roman fashion, seated or squatting, we crumble into the clear liquid, faintly sweetened, a little of our rye and barley bread, of the consistency of putty, and forming a pappy mass in the soup. The silence is religious. Eating is a solemn function in these days of scarcity. For a lengthy interval nothing is to be heard in the “square” but the rattling of spoons upon tin.

In our corner, where two friends sitting very close together sip steaming chocolate, the fervour is even greater than among those who are taking what we good-humouredly speak of as “cafÉ-au-lait.” Our mothers would consider our brew extremely crude. No milk! No sugar! But the palate of a prisoner of war differs from that of a pampered child. Bending over our joint mess-tin, Guido and I are silently and sadly happy. Poor joys of the famished, how one makes the most of you with a greedy and simple soul!