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Hope Dick & SEVEN MONTHS A PRISONER

Private Hope Dick’s Story

Among those who returned by the Matatua on Saturday 22 February 1919 was Pte Hope Dick, a grandson-in-law of Mr Havard, of Hadfield Street. Pte Hope Dick, who has picked up wonderfully on the voyage to the Dominion, was looking fit and well, and in the course of a most interesting conversation with a Press representative told the story of his capture. Pte Dick was a member of the Otago Entrenching Battalion , and at the time of his capture was engaged digging trenches in the neighbourhood of Ypres. The big German advance took place, as everyone knows, in March last, and in April it had reached Ypres.
On April 16th Pte Hope Dick was at Méteren when his company of 150 was surrounded by a large body of Germans armed with machine guns and taken prisoner. This took place at about 8 o’clock in the morning, and the company was marched through the German lines till nearly midnight. Nothing whatever was given the men to eat either that day or the next, in fact it was not until the third day that the prisoners were given any food. For some time the New Zealand prisoners were quartered in an old farmhouse and were compelled to unload motor - lorries filled with ammunition. “What sort of food did you get?” asked the “Press” representative. “It is hardly worth mentioning,” was the reply, “seeing that we scarcely got any at all, in fact it barely sufficed to keep us alive. A few more weeks would have settled a good many of us. The bill-of-fare for breakfast was burnt wheat and water, which the Germans called coffee. No bread, no meat, and nothing else.” “Dinner,” said Pte Dick, “consisted of a pint of thin sauerkraut soup with, occasionally, a piece of black horse-meat in it. The sauerkraut requires washing in about eight or nine waters to get the sourness out of it, but it was tipped out of the cask into a boiler and boiled up for us just as it was. By George, it was sour,” added Pte Dick. Tea consisted of a third of a loaf of German bread and more “coffee.” “Sometimes we got only a quarter of a loaf. It all depended upon how much the Germans had. Two or three days a week we managed to pick up a few turnips and mangolds, and these actually kept us alive,” said Pte Dick. “People can scarcely believe how badly the prisoners were treated, in fact the full truth Is never published as the people would think we were exaggerating. The coffee had a curious effect on the majority of us, our ankles swelling up in a horrible manner,” continued Pte Dick. “For six months and three weeks we did not have a change of underclothing, and at the end of this time we each obtained a singlet and pair of underpants through the kindness of some Belgian Sisters of Mercy. For part of the the time of our incarceration we were kept closely guarded in an old French fortress in Lille . Here 300 of us were in a room 60 by 20 feet in extent. I need hardly say it was horrible.”
“Towards October we were set to work putting up barbed wire entanglements and digging trenches to stem the British advance, a work, needless to say, that we carried out very unwillingly at the point of the bayonet. At this time we had to walk 15 kilometres to work and the same distance back at night, and compelled to work at high pressure. What this meant to us, starved as we were, you can imagine.”
Asked if there was a shortage of food amongst the Germans, Pte Hope Dick said this was the case from July onwards, the Huns from then feeling the pinch more and more each week. There was not the slightest doubt there was a shortage of food in Germany towards October though there was plenty of ammunition. Continuing his narrative, Pte Hope Dick said that as the British advanced the prisoners were moved further back until at the time when the armistice was signed the Entrenching Battalion was about 11 kilometres from Brussels, having been on the march for four days, travelling about 30 kilometres each day. On the march the prisoners were made to pull wagons loaded with the packs of their German guards. On the armistice being signed the Belgian Relief Committee took charge of the prisoners and gave them civilian clothes and food. After a few days in Brussels the members of the Entrenching Battalion were taken to Courtrai and thence to Calais, from which place they were transferred to London where they were medically examined, the unfit going to hospital and the rest on leave prior to returning to New Zealand. “The High Commissioner in London, Sir Thomas MacKenzie, was very good to all,” said Pte Dick, “as was also Mr Cecil Wray of Wanganui. A feature of our imprisonment was that we were registered as being in one of the internment camps in Germany when as a matter of fact, we were in France and Belgium all the time. Consequently, we saw none of the Red Cross parcels that were sent to the camps.”
“The letters home of prisoners which purported to show that prisoners were being well treated were written at the instigation of the German authorities to give the people at Home and in the Colonies an idea that the prisoners were being treated well. Of course,” added Pte Dick, “we were not bound to write, but when we did the authorities insisted on us giving a highly coloured account of our treatment.” “To say that we were treated as if we were beasts gives some idea of our actual Pte Dick went on to say. “No 1 man unless he were a fiend would treat his beasts as we were treated, that is, if he valued their lives at all. As I said before, a few more weeks of it would have finished us all.”
As an instance of the way the prisoners were treated, Pte Dick instanced the case of a New Zealand sergeant who was taken to an hospital in Belgium seriously ill. He was placed on the floor for two hours and then put into a bed indescribably filthy from which a dead German had just been taken. “As a matter of fact,” said Pte Dick, “we were treated not as prisoners but as slaves. When I was in England and saw the way the British were treating the German prisoners who were loafing most of the time I felt like taking the sentry’s rifle and bayoneting a few.” Questioned as to whether there was not any possibility of escape during their term of imprisonment, Pte Dick said there was practically none as they were all so closely guarded a German soldier with rifle and bayonet for every three of four men. This, he said, was in marked contrast to the British way of guarding prisoners one sentry having charge of 50 men or more. A few New Zealand prisoners escaped, Pte Dick stated, and these got as far as the German rear lines and the support trenches when they were re-captured. Some came back and some did not, he significantly added. Those who returned were placed in a dark cell on bread and water for 14 days, in marked contrast to the treatment meted out by the authorities to Count von Buckner and his piratical crew, by the way. Questioned as to the state of affairs among the German troops when the armistice was signed Pte Dick said there was no doubt they were on the verge of collapse, partly owing to disorganisation of transport consequent upon the rapid advance of the Allies and partly through lack of food. It was a pity, in Pte Dick’s opinion, that the armistice was signed when it was. Had the war lasted a few more weeks, or even days, longer, there would have been witnessed the greatest debacle in history, and the Germans would have gone down never to rise again. As it is, up to the present the German people believe their men have not been beaten in the field. “
Altogether,” said Pte Dick, “I have had an experience that I would never like to see repeated, and one I shall never forget to my dying day! I can only say in conclusion, from my experience eleven months as a prisoner of war in the hands of the Germans that one can believe all one hears of the inhuman conduct of the Germans towards those who have been unfortunate enough to fall into their hands, and even then a tithe of their awfulness will not have been told.”
Hope’s war had been short. He served a total of 214 days, with 93 overseas. Sweet it was not! He enlisted on 12 July 2017, underwent training, and then embarked on the Willochra on 22 November 1917. He arrived in Liverpool on 7 February 1918 and proceeded to Sling , the major NZ base in Wiltshire, England. On 20 March 1918 he left for France and marched into Etaples on the 24th of that month. Less than one month later, he was a prisoner of war! On 9 June, the Frankfurt Red Cross reported him a POW (classified as not wounded). On 30 November he arrived back in London. The timing was fortuitous as the NZ government was working to get all wounded soldiers and the POWs home as soon as possible. On 8 January 1919, he boarded the Matatua in Tilbury to return home. His final day of service was 22 March 1919.
Hope may not have served for long but the injuries he sustained greatly affected the rest of his life.

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