Postcards from Captivity

 

It was an unusual place to take a holiday. 
Far from the raucous bedlam of a big city,
this tiny town, a village really,
was tranquil and untroubled. 
Even in winter
there was time
to indulge in slippery sports
unconcerned about falling through the ice. 

If the weather was too cold or wet
then one could find distraction
with indoor activities
like making music with friends.

In some ways this place was like a spa
with opportunity to pursue healthful exercise
that restored ones physical fitness.

But few tourists would ever choose
this place as a holiday destination.
Indeed, at the time,

most people were far too busy
to imagine taking a vacation anywhere.

It was 1917 and the world was at war.

Today I present a set of picture postcards
sent by one man from a place he never expected to visit,
much less stay confined to for over two years. 
He was a young officer in the Belgian army
held captive in a prisoner of war camp.

This is his story
told in small fragments of a life removed
from the horrible turmoil of the battlefield.
 

We begin in the winter. A camera positioned at high vantage point takes a photo of men skating (or maybe sliding) around on an outdoor ice rink. It's a large space, at least 30 m (100 ft) wide and maybe twice as long. It doesn't look like a pond but more like a flooded field. Surrounding it is a double row of tall fencing with a snow-covered hill beyond. 

Over two dozen men are on the ice which has been swept of snow. They might be playing a team game like hockey but I think they are too disorganized for that. It's really just a picture of fun. 

The back of the card has no message but does have an official printed form. It's a Kriegsgefangenensendung, a 23-letter German word for "prisoner of war letter". On the left edge is a line for the Name of the Sender and the  address: Offizier-Gefangenenlager, Wiesa b. Annaberg. On the other side is the name of the photographer: Albin Meiche, Hofphotograph, Annaberg,  Sa[xony]. 

Annaberg-Buchholz is a modest-sized town in Saxony, situated in the Ore Mountain region of eastern Germany. It is now the capital of the district of Erzgebirgskreis which is on the northwest border of Czechia, though until 1919 it was the border of the Austria-Hungary empire. Wiesa bei Annaberg is a small village about 4km (2.5 miles) north of Annaberg. It is now called Thermalbad Wiesenbad.  

My guess is that this photo was taken in the winter of 1916-17 or 1917-18, but it really doesn't matter since it's a cheery wintertime image to set the first scene of my story.

The next postcard is literally a scene. This photo shows a tiny theatre stage with a group of 19 costumed characters squeezed together in front of a paper mâché forest grove. Most are men, some in military uniforms of the Imperial Russian army, but three are women, one in a white dress. Could this be a wedding scene from some play or operetta? The women look suspiciously masculine.  

The postcard is signed:

A Maurice Dardene
de Voldemar Piotrovitch
3 (16). 2. 7
"Le Mariage"

The annotation on the back gives a man's name and a title of the scene or play: A Maurice Dardene and "Le Mariage" or The Wedding in French. Was Maurice in this theatrical troupe? I don't know, but, as we will see, it's possible he was. The photo is similar to other postcards of theater scenes produced in prisoner of war camps that I've featured before. Check out The Role of a Lifetime, or The Königsbrück POW Camp, A Theatre of War. 

Also printed on the back is the photographer's name: Julius Dürr, Photograph, Bischofswerda i. S. Bischofswerda is a town in Saxony at the western edge of the Upper Lusatia region, about 12okm (72 miles) east of Wiesa. During the Great War it was the site of a prisoner of war camp for officers, mainly Russian and Canadians. 

Now for a different play. This next photo shows a small group of eight characters, five men and three women, in a drawing room. The stage is about the size of the one in the previous scene and shares some clues that make me think it's the same theatre. The prompter box looks identical, and in the top corners are hanging light fixtures (?) that look the same. One actor with a huge mustache (or Schnurrbart in German) wears a Napoleonic army uniform which suggests this is a French play. One character, a woman, is marked below with an X 

During the war German and Austria-Hungary built hundreds of prisoner of war camps to house enemy soldiers who surrendered or were captured. In these POW camps soldiers were held captive as a prize of war, but they were not incarcerated as punishment for a crime. They were granted a level of freedom that allowed them, within the confines of the camp, of course, to organize many activities and recreations like theater, music, and athletics. Officers, who were a much smaller portion of the total POW population, were accorded an additional level of respect for their rank that freed them from being assigned to work details outside the camp as the enlisted POWs were.  

This postcard was sent through by special post service following a convoluted route from Germany to Belgium.  

Bon et Joyeux anniversaire    [X moi] 
5 Mai 1917
Lovely and Happy Birthday  [X me]
5 May 1917

Moi with an X was Maurice Dardenne, Lieut(enant) d'artillerie belge. He was sending birthday greetings to Mademoiselle Marthe Dardenne of 31 impasse du Chemin de fer ~ 31 railway cul-de-sac, Châtelet, Belgium. Châtelet is a city on the river Sambre in the Walloon region of the province of Hainaut, Belgium.

Lt. Darenne had been prisoner since 1914 when he was captured at Fort Liesele on 12 October 1914. This information was carefully recorded on 13 March 1917 in an Imperial German Army account book of enemy prisoners of war. Neatly typed onto three rows across six columns was the full name of each soldier along with his rank, unit, date and place of capture, and date of birth with birthplace. Lt. Darenne was number 3 on page 16715. 

Prisoner of War record for 
Maurice Arthur Joseph Dardenne
Source: Prisoners of the First World War
ICRC historical archives

His full name was Maurice Arthur Joseph Dardenne, Leutnant~ Lieutenant in the 15th battalion of the Fest(ungs)~fortress artillery of Fort Liezele in Belgium. He was captured there on 10.10.14 (10 October 1914) during the German invasion to take Belgium prior to advancing on France. He was born on 12 August 1892 in Châteletville (Heinaut~Hainaut). So in May 1917 when he marked his X, Lt. Maurice Dardenne was approaching his 25th birthday. His youthful handsome face made him perfect to play a female role in that play.

Map of the National Redoubts
around Antwerp, Belgium in 1914
Source: Wikipedia

Belgium's security was invested in guarding the important port city of Antwerp. Between 1859 and 1914 the Belgian military constructed a series of 28 forts called the National Redoubt that were arranged in two rings around the city of Antwerp. On this map of the fort system, Fort Liezele is located at the 7 o'clock position. Like many of these fortresses, Fort Liezele, was built out of masonry and concrete 2.5 m thick but woefully unreinforced. By 1914 these forts were armed with two or three mounted turrets of heavy artillery. 

But Belgium lacked Germany's huge armament industry and its cannons could not compete against the larger and heavier German field artillery. When the German army besieged Antwerp in late September 1914 their guns fired at the Belgian forts from a distance that the smaller Belgian cannons could not reach to do any damage. In August the Germans had also used Zeppelins for the first aerial bombardment of a city. 

When the final German assault broke through the outer ring of forts the city fell 12 days later. On 10 October the last Antwerp garrison surrendered and those Belgian troops unable to escape west to France or east to the  Netherlands were captured. Lt. Dardenne was one of them. Altogether 730 Belgian officers and 40,500 Belgian soldiers were taken to Germany as prisoners of war. Around 2,000 would die in captivity.   

According to records at the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) based in Geneva, after his capture Lt. Dardenne was first sent to a POW camp in Döbeln, a large town in Saxony. The German military account with his name is dated 23 January 1915. The list has six artillery officers from the 15th battalion at Fort Liezele and three from the 14th at Fort Breendonck. This camp was run by the German XIX Corps which also ran the camps at Bischofswerda and Wiesa.

At some point in late 1916 or early 1917 Dardenne was transferred to a new officers' camp in Wiesa. This postcard shows a nighttime scene of the main building there where he was housed shimmering in winter snow. A caption reads: Offizier – Gefangenenlager Wiesa. The building has four floors plus attic rooms with windows aglow in electric light. It looks a bit like a large school adorned by a central cupola dome. 

Puis en bonne santé - Embrassements
No. 21,  30 Mai 1917
Then in good health - Kisses
no. 21,  30 May 1917

Like the previous one, this card was sent by Maurice Dardenne to Mademoiselle Marthe Dardenne of Châtelet. Written in one corner is "no. 21", a reference to his 21st correspondence to Marthe. Soon after the belligerent nations began taking prisoners, the International Red Cross, worked to establish a postal service for captured soldiers. It was complicated because the war closed all borders which meant letters and parcels could only shipped via neutral nations. It also soon required a massive cost for rail transport which snatched valuable time and resources needed by the military forces. Soldiers and their families learned to add special codes to keep track of their letters and parcels which were often mixed up due to long postal delays. 

former Robert Friedrich Kartonnagenfabrik (now hosiery factory)
at Wiesa bei Annaberg, Saxony, Germany
Source: 28 February 1932 Illustrated Erzgebirge Sunday Paper

In February 1932 a small regional German newspaper reported on the history of the officers prison camp in Wiesa. It even provided a wonderful non-winter photo of the same building as in Lt. Dardenne's postcard. According to the report the building was a cardboard factory newly constructed in 1914 for an Annaberg businessman, Robert Friedrich, but never made operational. It was conveniently situated near a train station and had grounds large enough to construct three more barracks for imprisoned officers and their German guards. 

The Wiesa camp first opened on 3 August 1916 with the arrival of "180 French and Russian officers and 65 boys. The French came from the fighting at Verdun, where the surprise German attack began on 21 February 1916, which achieved a gain of 20 kilometers wide and 10 kilometers deep by March 8 and captured the armored fortress of Douaumont. 25,000 French were taken prisoner. The captured officers were distributed among the four officer prisoner camps in Saxony in Bischofswerda, Döbeln, Königstein and Wiesa. The arrival of the transport was known only to a few people, so that the prisoners entered the Wiesa camp almost unseen."

This picture postcard shows a painted landscape view of Wiesa bei Annaberg, Saxony. The tall steeple in the center is St. Trinitatis Evangelical Lutheran church of Wiesa, Just beyond to left center is a building very like the cardboard factory. Though this card was sent before the war on 25 October 1913, I think it still may show the factory as it was being constructed

This officers' camp in Wiesa was probably set up to deal with the great influx of enemy prisoners taken as the war moved into its second year. Apparently it was too small to be described in British catalogs of the camps, and in fact, it may never have housed British officers. Belgian and French officers could be kept together as they generally shared the same language. (Though many Belgians speak Dutch or German as their native language.)

In 1921 a German scholar, Dr Wilhelm Doegen (1877-1967), director of the Sound Department at the Prussian State Library in Berlin, published a book entitled: "Peoples Held as Prisoners of War, The Attitude and Fate of Prisoners of War in Germany". The book is a terrific compendium of statistics, photos, and descriptions of how the German prisoner of war system was devised and managed. It covers issues of housing construction, health, and morale. According to this webpage for an archive of Wilhelm Doegen's work,"during World War I, he visited 70 POW camps where he recorded over 250 languages and dialects, as well as examples of traditional music." 

Dr. Doegen included a short outline of activities at the officers' camp at Wiesa.
 

WIESA __
    a. Lectures (in November 1917):24 hours of instruction and lectures weekly on German, English, Spanish, differential and integral calculus, trigonometry, mechanics, geometry, arithmetic, algebra, electricity, history, and Russian (with explained reading passages), literature, philosophy, mathematics, natural sciences, and law. Library. Music studies, concerts, a puppet theater, film screenings, board games, and card games.
    b. Sports, gymnastics (parallel bars, horizontal bar, and vaulting equipment), tennis, croquet, and ball games; walks, gardening, handicrafts (wood carving, ivory inlay work, macrame, clay modeling, painting, knitting, and knotting).

This is a photo of the music room in Wiesa. Six chairs and music stands are arranged  next to an upright piano. On the piano and chairs are three violins, a cello, a mandolin, and a guitar. Bright sunlight fills the room. The caption reads: Offizier – Gefangenenlager Wiesa.

This postcard was no. 24 from Lt. Dardenne and this time is addressed to Madam Gustave Dardenne at the same address in Châtelet.

Recu lettre Victor 7 -  Bon baisers
No. 24,  13 Juin 1917
Received letter Victor 7 -  Best kisses
no. 24,  13 June 1917

The short note refers to Maurice receiving Victor's letter no. 7. Like the first postcard of the men on the ice rink, this photo was taken by Albin Meiche of Annaberg. 

In the summer the officers at Wiesa took advantage of their ice-free playing field for other sports. In this postcard there are two different matches going on. In the foreground a dozen men playing football. The camera has caught the ball in motion and someone is about to do a header. In the background behind a tall fence is a tennis court with a couple of players next to the net.   

This card was addressed to Madame Gustave Dardenne of Châtelet and postmarked on 22 July 1917 in Wiesa, though Maurice Dardenne dates his short message, no. 29, 11 July 1917. Since he has already demonstrated the use of X marks moi, I don't think he is pictured in this group of football players.

Bonne Fête Victor et Marthe - Baisers 
No. 29,  11 Juillet 1917
Happy Holiday Victor and Marthe - Kisses
no. 29,  11 July 1917

Maurice's good wishes to Victor and Marthe on a card addressed to Madame Gustave Dardenne makes me think that they are his younger siblings and that Madame is his mother. This might have been the start of the school holidays in Châtelet. 

Pursuing physical culture was a part of military training that would understandably become very common in prison camps. This photo has a surreal quality as a man hangs horizonal on a high bar. Whether the camera has caught him planking stationary or in mid-swing, I do not know. But it looks hard to sustain either way. Beyond him is a compatriot in uniform. Officers and soldiers considered themselves still in service and under command of their nation's senior officer in the camp. Almost all of the soldiers in my collection of prisoner of war camps wore appropriate military uniforms even though the fabric became threadbare and dirty as the years went by.

Just to the right of the other soldier is a little hut for a German guard. They were stationed around the Wiesa camp playing field and I believe this one is visible on the far side of the ice rink photo. It marked as number 10 under the little roof.       

This card was sent to Marthe Dardenne and marked by Maurice as no. 32. dated 24 July 1915, but the postmark date is 3.8.17. Prisoner mail got low priority. 

Vive  Ste. Marthe! Bons bécot
No. 32,  24 Juillet 1917 
Long live Saint Marthe! Good kisses
no. 32,  24 July 1917 

This message seems a more personal note for Marthe. Was Maurice praising her for an scholastic award? Could it be for her Catholic confirmation? In that case she would be around age 7 or 8. His 24 July date might be a clue as there is a biblical Sainte Marthe of Bethany whose feast day is July 29 and maybe he is connecting the postcard to her name day. Sainte Marthe is venerated by Roman Catholics in Provence, France, as she took care of the hungry, and is traditionally considered the patroness of housewives, waiters, waitresses, and cooks. But without more clues Marthe's age and relationship to Maurice remains a mystery.

Within the cardboard factory a room was reserved for a Catholic chapel. This photo shows a fairly elaborate altar with a central crucifix and two supporting statues. At the bottom of the photo is the caption: Offizier – Gefangenenlager Wiesa. All the armies, of course, had chaplains in service, but they were not captured in sufficient numbers to administer to their fellow prisoners of war in every camp. According to the 1932 report on the Wiesa camp, there was a French chaplain at the samp, but Russian soldiers had a challenge as they worshiped in the Eastern Orthodox faith which was nothing like Catholic or Protestant rites. So a Russian chaplain was brought in from one of the larger camps in the Saxony district.    

This card was not posted but it came with the others from the same dealer so I believe it must be part of Maurice Dardenne's estate. Like the first photo of the ice rink, this has the same official Wiesa camp form printed on the back, though here there is a fuzzy reverse overprint. Most likely Maurice sent some postcards inside letters which have sadly been separated from the postcards. Such is the destiny of all holiday picture postcards. All postcards and letters were subject to censors under the German commandant. On the cards that were posted there is a red F.A. stamp that shows the message was approved for posting. This may account for the delay getting camp mail into the German postal system.  

The 1932 German newspaper report include this description of how the officers were able to purchase extra items to have in camp.   

Like all other prison camps, the Wiesa Officers' Prison Camp also issued its own camp money in the form of vouchers. No prisoner was allowed to carry cash. He could only buy with the store money substituted for him. This prevented German money from accumulating on a prisoner, which could then have been used for
bribery, escape attempts, etc.

For months and years, the prisoners of Wiesa passed the time reading, smoking, playing cards and writing. They had at their disposal a rich library of French and Russian works supplied by universities, as well as a music room with violin, cello, piano and harmonium, and a small home cinema. Furthermore, the French had built a tennis court, built a bowling alley and acquired gymnastics equipment at their own expense. A large proportion of the prisoners also engaged in vegetable cultivation and the cultivation of flowers of all kinds on the associated 3-acre site; still others practiced the breeding of rabbits, chickens, and pigeons, even pigs and goats, in a large number of stables and then sold the animals to residents of Wiesa, etc.

 

My final postcard from Maurice is a wintertime scene of the hills above the Snow is heaped against the perimeter fence and in the lower corner is a note:
28 ft. The black and white photo has a kind of abstract quality as the contrast is too extreme to make out all the details, but I imagine that Maurice on looking out his barrack windows and seeing his little camp covered in snow must have felt it a magical sight that he wished he could share with his family.   

This was postcard no. 55 and it was now 6 March 1918. The card was sent to Mademoiselle M. Dardenne. Perhaps a recognition of her maturity? 

à quand de les lourelle? Baisers
No. 55,  6.3_1918
when will we see them? Kisses
No. 55,  6.3_1918

Lt. Maurice Dardenne of the Belgian artillery had been confined for 3 years, 4 months, and 24 days. His sustained holiday had doubtless lost all novelty and salutary qualities.  That winter of 1917-18 the future still seemed unpredictable. One could always hope but the fate of the world was as yet undecided. 

Soon the American Expeditionary Force would join the French and British on the great battlefield of the Western Front. But the outcome would only be determined by more vicious bloodshed. For someone so long separated from their family, their comrades, and their fellow citizens, Maurice must have felt unbearable longing to return home. "When will we see them?", he asks. He could not know then, but he had 250 more days to wait. 

The war continued up until 11 a.m. UT on 11 November 1918.

2,738 men died on the last day.

I have been unable to learn anything more about Maurice Dardenne. So I know nothing of his fate or of Marthe, Victor, and Madame Gustave Dardenne. What little I could discover only increased the number of questions I have, of course, but his name is fairly common and there are few Belgian resources open for long distance internet research. 

Maurice was an artillery man so he would have experienced a share of the noise, bedlam, and destruction of the war, but captivity spared him from the worst terror. No doubt he and his fellow imprisoned officers picked up some news of the war. But it would have been stale news by the time it reached Wiesa and very likely distorted or mistaken. 

While he was held in captivity, his homeland Belgium was occupied by the Imperial German army. From the beginning of its invasion the German forces committed numerous atrocities and systematic war crimes against Belgian civilians. It became known as The Rape of Belgium. Here is a description from the Wikipedia entry:

Throughout the war, the German army systematically engaged in numerous atrocities against the civilian population of Belgium, including the intentional destruction of civilian property; German soldiers murdered over 6,000 Belgian civilians, and 17,700 died during expulsions, deportations, imprisonment, or death sentences by court. The Wire of Death, a lethal electric fence maintained by the Imperial German Army to hinder civilians from fleeing the occupation to the Netherlands, resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 Belgian civilians. Some 120,000 were forced to work and deported to Germany. German forces destroyed 25,000 homes and other buildings in 837 communities in 1914 alone, and 1.5 million Belgians (20% of the entire population) fled from the invading German army.

While Maurice was on his forced vacation, his family and friends back home endured relentless brutality that must have greatly added to his stress. Unfortunately his postcards offer too few lines for us to read anything between them. Did he survive the war? The pandemic? The great depression? The next war? We can only imagine and guess.

This set of picture postcards have more than one story to tell. The photos are more like tiny scenes from episodes in a long running television drama. We see odd characters whose names we don't know. Events and places that make no sense. It looks vaguely interesting if we only knew the context. That is what I've tried to present here—a context. I don't know how Maurice's story began or ends. But I do know something of what he once experienced and what he missed out on. It was no holiday, despite the pretty pictures. 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where nothing ever interferes with delivery of the mail.