The Polish Connection 31

May - July 1918

I had this letter from Jo. “I’ve just heard from Dorothy’s father. Strangely he doesn’t mention her at all, but has informed me of the deaths of all three of her brothers – Francis Cyril Houghton, Reginald C. Houghton and Basil Gordon Houghton. I was so upset I didn’t know what to do. I was hoping to marry Cyril, and although he had never spoken of it to me, I knew from his letters that he cared for me. Now that he is gone, I just want to scream and cry, but what good would that have done. So I took a knife and on the inside glass of one of the lights in the dining room sash window, I scratched my name and Cyril’s – as if somehow the romance that will now never happen at least has an existence in some physical way.”

I wrote back to her straight away, of course, and offered my sympathy. She lost her best friend and  potential husband all in a very short time. She must be very unhappy.

I had two letters from John which arrived at the same time.

Dear Barbara, Rebecca and darling Beth,

I ride around a lot looking at the nearby villages, hills, beaches etc. The weather gets very hot round about midday when there is frequently a short sharp thunderstorm after which it gets hot again.

A bomb went off in the cold meat storage depot last night. And the other night when we were in town, we were coming home at two am and when we went outside we found the sky all alight from a big fire in the middle of Limassol, and all the church bells ringing for miles around. About 2.30 there were lots of people around, and it is not a very nice spot during any trouble so we shot off. Luckily it was dark so no one recognised we were English so we didn’t have any trouble. We all three had revolvers which we had loaded ostentatiously in front of the Greeks so we didn’t have any trouble.

However the streets were full of people moving towards the centre of Limassol and there was a lot of noise and fire engines hurtling past. All very interesting. Apparently what has happened is that someone threw a bomb at the Turkish embassy in Limassol which caused the Turks to riot and set the Greek owned cigarette factory on fire, and also the sports stadium. The Greeks then joined in and in the ensuing battle, stones, iron bars, shot guns, bombs, etc. were used and two Greeks were killed. This morning the papers blamed it on the British whom they said allowed the Turks to go wild and start beating them up. 

But the result is that we are now not allowed out of camp, but if somebody cuts down some telegraph poles then I can go out and put them up again.

I’m glad you took time to read about sunspots and hope that it helped you form a more scientific explanation for the Fatima nonsense.

Hope you are all well.

Love from John

Dear Barbara,

Things have been quite hectic here this past week. We heard that a new battalion was arriving in 24 hours and that they would require telephones. This took all that evening to fix. The next day we heard that two more battalions were arriving that night which meant that all Saturday morning and evening and all Sunday was spent fixing phones for these people. It entailed amongst other things laying a cable across the main road which meant I had to find the draining plan as cable has to go under it. However we got it all finished.

Love from John

And another letter from Peter.

Dear Barbara, Rebecca and my little Beth,

You asked about whether we go to Church. We are allowed to go to the Patrick Church on occasion. Of course there are many thousands of us, and only space in the church for 200 at the most. So we have a rota and I have managed to go to church about twice a year.

The Patrick church dates from 1714 when it was consecrated by Bishop Wilson through whose exertions the church had been built. Prior to this date Patrick and German (can you imagine that there is a village called that near here) shared St. Peter’s in Peel. The church was rebuilt 1881 as the old church was in a very bad state of repair - the site of the old church becoming part of the graveyard. The site itself must have been of some importance as it is mentioned in 1505.

Love from Peter

I have had my experience of playing the organ at St. Martin’s Church, and how wonderful it was. I was trembling when I went into the church to practice ahead of time.

Miss Hudson met me there, and showed me around the various features of the church. What struck me most was that it was just like being in a Catholic Church. There was a holy water font. There were stations of the cross on the walls. There were candles being lit in front of the Lady Chapel altar. There were crucifixes. There was incense. People genuflected. The vicar was called Father Hickson. It was really more like being in my church back in Wisconsin than the small little church that hides behind the vicarage at St. Mary’s.

Miss Hudson explained that her family are Anglo-Catholics or ‘Tractarians’, followers of the Oxford Movement begun in 1833, which had the aim of restoring catholic principles to the Church of England. Unsympathetic to the style of worship at All Saints in Marple, which was by comparison plain, her family decided to build a new church where they could worship in their accustomed manner.

She told me that Anglo-Catholic worship was regarded with a great deal of suspicion at the time and obtaining permission was not a straightforward matter. Nevertheless, it was granted and Mrs. Ann Hudson donated the site, whilst Miss Maria Hudson, her daughter, provided the funds for the permanent church building.

The architect, John Dando Sedding, believed that a church should be ‘wrought and painted over with everything that has life and beauty - in frank and fearless naturalism.’ The Lady Chapel has an incredible gesso panelled ceiling by the designer Christopher Whall, with trees, animals and birds, including flying martins with a colour scheme of silver and gold against a knight blue background and is quite spectacular.

She showed me the major extension which was carried out in 1909 when St. Christopher’s Chapel opposite the main door was added as a memorial to Maria Hudson. This includes a huge relief tablet depicting St. Christopher carrying the boy Jesus, modelled in gypsum. She told me that it was done by the architect and designer Henry Wilson. The outside wall of the church had to be built out by around three feet to accommodate it.

The stained glass windows are wonderful. Again, Miss Hudson provided the history of them. The original windows in the Chancel are all by William Morris. Two windows, one by the main door and the other near the font are by Christopher Whall.

In 1888 a carved oak rood screen was added to divide the Chancel from the Nave. This also was designed by John Sedding, who said that he would paint it unless the grain was particularly good. It has a superb natural wood finish, so must have met with his standards.

The organ was a gift from Miss Stevenson of Cotefield on Hibbert Lane, and was designed specifically for the church at a cost of £220. I asked Miss Hudson if the man who built the organ was a priest, as she called him Father Willis. She told me that two of his nephews were in the organ building business with him, so he was called Father to distinguish him from them and also as a mark of high appreciation of his great abilities and artistic worth. She told me he was considered to the greatest organ builder of the Victorian Era. The organ doors were closed when we first got there, and in size it is in fact smaller than our organ at St. Mary’s Church. But the quality of the sound is much more wonderful, despite there being only six stops for each manual.

Anyway, it was a real experience sitting through and participating in the service, which was very like our Catholic Mass – except in English. What a relief to understand all the words. They had many hymns, which I knew but had never played before as they are not featured in our Catholic hymn books. And the thrill of having the huge congregation sing in loud and cheerful voice, again, was an experience to be remembered. At our church, the congregational singing is pretty soft and almost embarrassed sounding.

I am so glad I agreed to do it, and hope they will invite me to do it again sometime. Even so, I do hope our priest won’t hear about it, as I would hate for him to forbid me to play there again.

I have had a surprise letter from Paul. He says he is being transferred to a internment camp in Belgium, so is getting closer to his home. He seemed pleased, but it seems like a chapter of my life is now closing. I hope he manages to get his book published once the war is over.

July-August 1918

Dear Barbara, Rebecca and Beth,

It is full summer, but surprisingly the nights are still quite cold and the guards who are outside all night have to wear jackets to keep warm. The sun is out most of the day and it gets very hot indeed.

There is a lot to do at present as people keep cutting down my telegraph poles and cutting the wires. All rather trying. If I catch anyone doing it I shall shoot him first and then start asking questions. On one occasion someone cut down a pole and left a large tin covering the top of the stump. The lineman who found it though it might be a bomb, so he called out the bomb disposal team who blew it up. Of course it wasn’t a bomb but the explosion then caused by blowing up the tin blew down some more cables and caused more trouble than all the Greeks put together.

Next time I shall just throw a stone and see what happens.

Love from John

And loads of letters from Peter.

Dear Barbara, Rebecca and my little Beth,

You asked to tell me more about the products we make here to benefit others in our situation. Large numbers of boots and shoes, and some hosiery, are made here at Knockaloe for distribution through St. Stephen’s House amongst our women and children.

Bed-tables, and leg-rests, and other articles are made for the camp hospitals. Our tailors make suits of clothes, and boots for the use of our men when we finally leave camp. For the military hospital camps, crutches and walking sticks with rubber tips are produced, and also a very large stock of tooth-brushes made with the help of ingenious little machines devised by an engineer who was in charge of the industrial work in one of the camps.

But beyond all this work it is the aim of the Committee (on which I am the camp representative) to try and set on foot some form of production for the benefit of devastated areas of Europe. We were finally able to secure a workshop and material and set men to work in making furniture for the new homes of dispossessed French peasants. A generous friend of prisoners provided the necessary capital; a Birmingham Friend lent some wood-working machinery; and our industrial adviser prepared special designs of folding articles for convenience of transport. We’re also in the middle of building some dozens of large dressers and smaller buffet-cupboards, and about a hundred and fifty strong kitchen tables.

Camp Exhibitions are held from time to time and bring together some wonderful examples of clever and patient work. The occupations of the workshops cover a much wider range than what we have done in our camp. There are studios for the artists, and corners for jewellers, workers in metal, leather, raffia, and other materials. In one compound there is a book-binders’ shop; in another a lithographic or steel engraving press; and in another a room full of knitting machines, chiefly busy in making socks for the prisoners, either of new wool, or from the unravelled material of the old undarnables. More in the next letter.

Love from Peter

Dear Barbara, Rebecca and Beth,

Large quantities of ornamented tablecloths and other woven stuffs are made on hand looms built and worked at Knockaloe. It was not possible to introduce an instructor for this or other work into the camp, but permission was obtained for a Swedish lady to teach two prisoners in the Friend's hut, and these men were then able to instruct other would-be weavers inside the wire. One of the looms that was made was used for instructional purposes in a successful textile school in Camp I.

Another change has come upon us. Instead of being jeered at as Huns, now there are Englishmen, representing many others, coming into the camp in pure friendship. It shows us that the spirit of hatred and the fever of war do not possess the whole land. It is the link, so much needed, with the common feelings of humanity and sympathy that are still ruling in simple hearts all over the world. To these visitors we can speak freely of our bitterness, loneliness or despair, and be assured of understanding and the chance of help.

Thank you for your continued support for me and your wonderful letters. I am pleased that you are interested in my information about what we are doing here. It is so different from the first few years of our confinement when we were bored. Now I am busy every moment of every day.

Several Adult Schools have been formed here of which the most interesting is that one whose members are drawn from the penal compound. In this compound are collected all the supposed dangerous and doubtful characters, chiefly aliens who have come to camp directly from prison. Among them are naturally a number of striking and original characters, and probably no Adult School has had more lively and unorthodox discussions than this one.

These men have suffered many moral dangers before being thus collected together, and have lacked discipline and occupation. Some of the senior men in the camp have devoted themselves, heart and soul, to helping these comrades.

Do you remember the stories of the odd collection of men that Paul and I wrote to you when we were first here?  Here are some more examples. A man  who was born on board ship, of an Italian mother, and whose father was reputed to have been a Transylvanian born in Malta. Anyhow, he bore an Austrian name so he was sent into camp.

There even came into camp too, from time to time, men who had been fighting in the British army, and had not considered themselves of alien nationality. One delightful man had been the colonel of a camel corps in the British force in Egypt, and we greatly enjoyed the moment when an inspecting General hit upon this man with the enquiry as to what his occupation had been before internment!

There is a clergy-man of the Church of England, who seems always on the point of being liberated, but has not been.

A man crippled in both feet was one day brought into the camp. He was a German officer who had been captured by the Russians and sent to Siberia. He escaped into China, getting his feet frostbitten by night exposure. He was helped through China by German sympathisers, crossed the Pacific to the States, travelled across the continent, and sailed for Europe on a neutral ship. The usual British warship appeared as they neared Europe and the man was detected during the search and brought to England for internment.

An Alsatian doctor, with a German name, is interned here though he had come over from America to help the cause of France. He was kept many months in camp while his papers were tossed about between representatives of France and England. Probably he would not have been released at all but for the intervention of a prominent French politician, who was his personal friend.

Our schools have developed into little universities, in spite of the increasing difficulties which many students feel in concentrating on any steady work. There are many musicians among the interned, so that really fine orchestras are possible, and these, with the theatrical societies and choral unions, do much to enliven the evenings. We are organised to death. There are athletic clubs, kitchen committees, relief committees, workshop committees, Y.M.C.A. committees. Camp journals are appearing, where circumstances and the censor allow, and the camp poets, artists, and entertainers are important citizens. I’ve counted 149 different committees at work.

Love from Peter