§ 1

Within a few weeks, however, the arrival of a parcel had ceased to be an affair of momentous import. We could look on bully beef and Maconochies with comparative unconcern. The contents of each parcel varied only in such incidentals as sugar, chocolate, and packets of whole rice. The framework was the same, a solid enough construction, but one that as a continuous diet proved ineffably tedious. To begin with, we tried to make our meals more interesting with improvised puddings. We mixed a certain number of different ingredients into a bowl of water, beat them up into a paste, and then baked them in a tepid oven. The result was usually stodgy and quite{130} tasteless. Personal vanity prevented us from confessing this, and night after night we struggled through these lukewarm, unpalatable dishes. How long this would have gone on I do not know; when the end came it came very suddenly.

One evening there was a lecture in connection with the Pitt League, and it was rumoured that Colonel Westcott was going to speak. And Colonel Westcott’s speeches were such that no one would willingly miss. He had always ready some new panacea, some fresh catchword. As long as he remained passive he was infinitely entertaining.

“We must go to this,” said Evans, and with some alarm I noticed that of the five other members of our mess, four were preparing to move seating accommodation.

“That’s all very jolly,” I said, “but who’s going to cook the dinner?”

The answer came back with a startling unanimity.

“You.”

“But look here,” I began to protest,{131} “you know what I am at these things. I’ve never cooked a dinner before.”

“Time you began then.”

And I was left standing before an empty stove. There remained only one other member of our mess, my friend Barron, who spent the greater part of his day asleep. I woke him up.

“Barron,” I said, “we’ve got to cook the dinner.”

He blinked up through sleep-laden eyes.

“But, my dear Alec....”

“It’s no good,” I said sternly. “If we want anything to eat, and I most certainly do, we’ve got to cook it ourselves.”

Slowly Barron rose from his seat.

“Well,” he said, “what have you got?”

“There’s a tin of bully, some beans, half a Maconochie, we can make a stew of that.”

The stew was the work of a second. We mixed it all up with water, scattered some salt on the top, and left it to boil.

“And now the pudding,” I said.

This proved a more difficult matter. There{132} was no rice left, and we had used the last of the Turban packets.

“Archie,” I said, “we’ll have to invent one.”

For five minutes we argued about the ingredients. Hodges wanted to give it a fish-flavour by adding a tin of salmon and shrimp paste.

“There’s been no taste to the beastly thing for the last six days,” he protested. “It might just as well taste of that as nothing.”

Finally, however, we decided on what we euphemistically dubbed a chocolate soufflé. First of all we spread a handkerchief flat on the table, and sprinkled over it a little cornflour. We then took a packet of cocoa.

“How much shall I upset?” I asked.

We read the directions on the outside, but on the subject of chocolate soufflés the manufacturers were sadly reticent. So as there was no clear guide, we used the entire packet.

The mixture now seemed to demand some{133} moisture, so we poured a little warm water on it, and tried to knead it into a dough. But it did not work: a brown paste adhered to our fingers; nothing more.

“It won’t bind,” said Barron. “We must put some butter with it.”

“We’ve got no butter.”

“Oh, well, then, try some beef-dripping.”

So the next ingredient was half a tin of dripping, and as regards appearances it certainly had excellent results. A few minutes’ hard kneading produced an admirable dough. But when we sucked our fingers afterwards, the flavour was anything but that of chocolate. It had a thick and greasy taste.

“Alec,” said Hodges, “this dripping’s ruined it.”

“Your idea,” I said cheerfully.

For a moment he looked fierce, then returned to the matter in hand.

“Something’s got to be done,” he said; “we’ve got to swamp that dripping somehow.”{134}

“What about some treacle?” I hazarded. “We drew some this afternoon.”

And within a minute the bulk of our pudding was further increased by an entire tin of treacle, and whatever its taste after that, it was certainly not of dripping.

“That’s about enough, isn’t it?” I said.

“Well, you know,” said Archie thoughtfully, “I don’t really think it would be harmed by some salmon and shrimp. After all, it would help to counterbalance the dripping.”

But already I had begun to wrap the handkerchief round the brown sticky ball. When it was firmly incased and knotted, we lowered it into a small saucepan, put it on the oven, and waited for the wanderers’ return.

They came back as usual with a great clatter of feet, expressing their hunger in the most forcible terms.

“Hellish hungry,” shouted Evans, “and the dinner’s bound to be awful if Waugh’s cooked it.”{135}

“You wait,” I said, and plumped the stew down before him. This dish, probably because it had cooked itself, was quite eatable; and there was so much of it that in the earlier days it would have formed a meal of generous proportions. And by the time we had finished it, none of us felt in the mood for any more solid fare. Something delicate and appetising would have been delightful, a pêche melba perhaps, but suet ... no. And of course this rather militated against the success of the chocolate soufflé.

And to begin with, it was a little burnt. There was a large hole in the encircling handkerchief, and the bottom of the pudding was black. Considering the bulk of the pudding, this had really very little effect; but it prejudiced the others, and the artist has to be so tactful with his public.

And then the pudding itself. Well, if we had not had the stew first, I am sure we should have all enjoyed it; but coming as it did on the top of a heavy dinner, even Barron and myself were hard driven to finish it.{136} And it was only self-respect that made us. The others took a spoonful or two and desisted. Barron and I struggled manfully to the end, and were then conscious of four steely pairs of eyes. Evans, who acted as a sort of mess president, was the first to speak.

“What did you two use to make this pudding?”

“Oh, nothing much,” I said, in an offhand way; “a little cocoa, a little treacle, a little cornflour.” Somehow I felt I could not confess to the dripping.

“But how much did you use?”

Barron must be a braver man than I am, or it may have been he was still feeling a little sore because the salmon paste had not been included; at any rate he went straight to the point.

“A tin of each.”

There was a general consternation. That a whole tin of treacle, half a tin of dripping, a complete packet of cocoa, had all gone to a pudding {137}that only a third of the mess had been able to eat at all ... it was unbelievable, a gross case of misplaced trust, perfidy could go no further.

Barron and myself were not popular that evening. But our peccadilloes bore fruit later. That chocolate soufflé served the purpose of a climax. From that day onward it was implicitly understood that no cook should invent recipes for puddings.
§ 2

With the regular arrival of parcels, and the consequent immunity from hunger, our life settled down into that ordered calm which would have been the constant level of our routine as long as the war lasted. And it was here that captivity weighed most heavily.

Before, our routine had always been to a certain extent progressive. We had been a new camp, we had had to form societies and committees. We had a library to build up, and there was always the parcel list to add its daily incentive to enthusiasm. But there came a time, when all these wishes{138} either for books or food were satisfied, and when the individual had to depend for amusement solely on his own resources. Here was the real trial of captivity.

Since my return several people have said to me, “It must have been beastly living among the Huns.” But that was an infliction that it required little fortitude to bear. The Huns never worried us, unless we worried them. We could have exactly as much intercourse with them as we wanted, and there was no need to have anything to do with them at all. But there was no escape from the continual presence of five hundred British officers, and the continual conversation of the ten other members of the room. For not one moment was it possible to be alone. And as the evenings grew darker, the doors of the blocks were closed earlier; and by October we found ourselves shut in at six o’clock, with the prospect of a long evening in the room.

Those evenings were simply appalling. We all got on each other’s nerves horribly;{139} as individuals we liked each other well enough; but it was no joke to be in the constant company of the same people, to hear the same anecdotes, the same opinions; and, owing to the limited area of common interests, talk always centred on the war. And there is no subject more wearisomely distasteful. By the end of six months’ imprisonment nearly every one had got utterly fed up with his room and the inmates of it. Smith would meet Brown outside the Kantine, and a conversation of this sort would take place.

“My Lord, Brown, but my room is the absolute limit, it drives me nearly wild.”

“But, my dear man, you’ve got some topping fellows in there, there’s Jones and Hawkins and May.”

“I dare say, but you try living with them for a bit. You wouldn’t talk like that then.”

“Oh, well,” Brown would say, “you haven’t got much to grumble at; if you were in my room, now....”{140}

“But your room, Brown; why, there are some tophole men there....”

And so the world went round. For indeed, however patient one is, it is impossible to live in the same room as ten other men, to eat there and sleep there, to spend half t............