Colditz by P. R. Reid

news at 7 a.m. over the radio. The atmosphere was electric all day. Padre Platt records what happened:
    All day the atmosphere was charged as though heralding an electric storm. The outlet came immediately after
Lichts aus
[lights out] when, from the other side of the
Hof
… a carolling voice breathed on to the still, confined air the strains of the “Volga Boatmen.” I grinned, as did scores of others—it was a good joke. Within a trice a score of voices wailed the lugubrious “Yoho heave-ho” and within another second not a score but a few hundred songsters leaned from the windows and joined in a dolorous crescendo which reverberated on the age-old walls.
    The guards on duty are of a new detachment. They are not yet
au fait
with the drill of an officers’ camp, and perhaps on such a day a Russian song made them feel hot under the collar. One of the two pulled himself to his full height and in the interval between the singing of patriotic songs of first one nation then another, he told everyone in plain Deutsch to get to bed. In response to this a couple of hundred and more voices rose and fell in lively imitation of an air raid siren.
    Then the storm broke! The whistle of falling bombs, the roar of dive bombers (what lungs some of these fellows have!), and as a soft background, heard only at intervals, the song of the Russian river-folk. For twenty minutes it was a perfectly hideous pandemonium in whicheveryone shared! Then someone, with the idea of adding realism to the show, bomb-whistled loudly and from a great height sent a beer bottle crashing on the sets below. It was followed by a second in which the beer had been well shaken, and the crash was appropriately louder. Cries of protest went up from almost every window, and no more were dropped, but the
Hof
was gay with newspaper-folded gliders which shot gracefully across the fifteen or twenty paces to the other side, and then petered out on the ground like falling stars.
    Most of us were uneasy about the bottles. They were capable of the worst interpretation; but I am persuaded they were not meant to intimidate the guards, and did not drop near them. One of the Germans, however, went to the guardhouse to seek advice and help. An
Unteroffizier
returned with him, and after examining the smashed glass shouted something that was lost in the infernal din of battle songs, war-machine noises, and screams as of terrified women.
    Three officers and several NCOs next arrived, and Priem, after looking at the mess of the broken bottles, called for what was presumably silence, though his voice was lost in the hideous noise. He tried again, with no better result. Then the order to shoot was given and, quick on the draw as the guards were, we were out of the windows and crouching on the floor a good deal quicker. Rifles cracked and bullets ricocheted, spattering the walls and splintering window panes. Silence! It was as still as a grave. Yes, P.O.W.s, more than most men, know the respect due to active fire-arms.
    Appell
was called, and we all trooped down to the
Hof
and fell in. Instead of being harangued as we expected, Major Menz, the second-in-command, called upon the Senior Officer of each nationality to line up before him. Then he said, “Throwing bottles at sentries is not gentlemanly behavior. In future you should not expect to be treated as gentlemen.”
    He did not address us, the rank and file, but dismissed the parade forthwith. Once back in our quarters the Colonel addressed us and, the typhoon being spent, no one was sorry when ordered to his bunk. The net results so far today are: radios disconnected, no newspapers delivered, all exercise cancelled.
    Some time about noon, Micky Surmanowicz, who has just finished his punishment for breaking out of the cells and scaling the vertical wall of the guardhouse, rather than have the whole camp strafed vicariously, confessed to Priem (through Admiral Unrug) that he had dropped the two beer