Without reliable help or supplies, the work of the hospital ground to a near standstill. Once more Albert found himself with time to ponder his book about civilization. Since starting the writing process, he’d struggled with how to describe what he believed: that all life is special; that people shouldn’t kill each other, or even animals, merely because they could; and that if you remove one group of animals or plants, you upset the balance of nature in a fundamental way.
During September 1915, Albert needed to travel to treat a sick missionary. He rode in one of two canoes pulled by a small towboat. It turned out to be a slow trip. The towboat had barely enough power to move itself and the two canoes forward against the current. As they chugged along, Albert used the time to work on his book. He scribbled pages of notes—anything he could think of—with a pencil as he tried to get to the heart of what he wanted to say. Late in the afternoon, as the sun cast long orange rays across the river, and the towboat carefully made its way past a group of hippopotami, a phrase came to Albert’s mind: “Reverence for Life.” Instantly he knew that this was the missing piece. If human civilization was to make real progress, then it must embrace the idea that all life was created by God and is sacred in its own way. Humans must approach nature as a beautiful gift that should not be squandered.
Albert remembered back to over thirty years before. He’d been a young schoolboy looking for acceptance when he agreed to go bird hunting with Heinrich Brasch in the hills above Gunsbach. He thought about how, as they closed in on a flock of stonechats resting in a beech tree, he had been overcome with dread at what they were about to do—kill innocent birds with slingshots. In the end Albert had thrown down his slingshot and run toward the beech tree, scaring the birds away before Heinrich could take a shot. He’d always been proud of his decision to protect the stonechats, and now he had a deeper understanding of why he had done what he did. His action had been motivated by a deep reverence for life. God had made and given those stonechats life, and because of that, they were sacred.
The revelation gave Albert the necessary drive to continue writing, though at times he was slowed down by bouts of anemia and bleeding sores on his feet.
As the war dragged on, many Europeans throughout the area came to stay at the hospital. Albert didn’t have drugs to treat most of them, but he knew that many were coming for companionship as much as anything else. Upon arriving in Africa, nearly all Europeans were advised to return home once every two years to build up their health. But like the Schweitzers, the war was forcing Europeans to stay much longer than intended. As a result, they were in desperate need of a nutritional boost, a good dentist, and a long rest. Albert could offer them only the last of these. He and Hélène often moved out of their bedroom to sleep on the veranda in order to give their guests a solid bed and some privacy in the hope that it would rejuvenate them and restore them to good health.
Meanwhile, mail from Europe was sporadic. Everyone exchanged any news they received in their letters, but most of it was from a French perspective. It felt strange to Albert to hear of “victories” in France that from the German perspective were “defeats.” News from the Western Front was particularly disturbing. This front marked the edge of the fighting between Germany and Allied forces, including France and Great Britain. It ran from the Belgian coast through eastern France, all the way to the border with Switzerland. Part of the front ran through western Alsace, and Albert could only imagine the damage being done there to his beautiful homeland.
In mid-August 1916, Albert received news from Gunsbach informing him that his mother had been killed. On July 3 she and Albert’s father were out walking in the countryside when an out-of-control horse, ridden by a German cavalryman, galloped around a corner and trampled her. She sustained serious injuries, and despite receiving immediate medical care, she died the following day. Albert wished he could be with his father and the rest of the family at that moment, but he was thousands of miles away.
By October 1916, Albert and Hélène agreed they needed a long break. They were both weak, and their health had been worn down. By now work at the hospital was at a complete stop. They had no food to give patients, no medicines to treat them with, and no staff to help. And they had no hope of more drugs or money being allowed into French Equatorial Africa from Germany. Albert and Hélène shuttered their house at Lambaréné and headed for Cape Lopez. There the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society loaned them money to rent a house by the river estuary on the condition that they also use it as a guest house for other exhausted missionaries. Soon another missionary couple from Alsace, Leon and Georgette Morel, joined them at the house. Finally, Albert let himself relax. He swam in the ocean, caught fish, took walks with Hélène, read books, and wrote. It was just what he needed, except for receiving the relentless updates about the carnage in Europe.
During the second week of April 1917, more than two and a half years after the start of the war, news reached Cape Lopez that on April 6 the United States had joined the French and British to fight the Germans. Albert hoped the move would end the fighting sooner rather than later.
After staying at the coast much longer than anticipated and feeling rested and rejuvenated, Albert and Hélène returned to Lambaréné in August 1917. It felt good to be back again. Albert felt strong enough to think about reopening the hospital as an outpatient clinic if he could get supplies. However, before he could do so, his and Hélène’s fortunes changed yet again. This time it came in the form of an official order from Brazzaville, the main administrative center for French Equatorial Africa. The newly formed French government of Georges Clemenceau had ordered that all enemy aliens in French Equatorial Africa be transferred to France immediately. Albert and Hélène were given twenty-four hours to pack one fifty-five-pound bag each and prepare to leave. It was agonizing for Albert as he went over what to do with his precious new book manuscript. He’d written it in German and realized any French official who laid eyes on it would probably confiscate the manuscript on the spot. What should he do with it? He decided to leave it with one of the other missionaries at Lambaréné, instructing him to hold on to it until the war was over and Albert could send for it. As a precaution he copied the headings and notes on the key points of the book into French to take with him.
Albert and Hélène were escorted back downriver to Cape Lopez, where they wearily climbed the gangway to board the steamship Afrique, bound for Bordeaux, France. A steward guided them to their cabin. A French colonial officer stopped by to tell them that throughout the voyage they could not leave their cabin or talk to anyone except the steward, and that once a day they would be taken on an escorted walk around the ship for exercise. Albert hardly cared. He was so exhausted from packing up and contemplating what might happen to his manuscript that he looked forward to sitting in solitude.
The steward did everything possible to make Albert and Hélène comfortable. He confessed he was doing so because one of Albert’s previous patients, a timber company owner from upriver, had voyaged on the Afrique several months before. He had told the steward about Albert’s medical work and asked him to treat the doctor from Lambaréné with care and respect if Albert was ever a passenger or a prisoner aboard the ship. Albert was cheered to hear this, but there was no hiding the fact that he and Hélène were returning to France as prisoners of war.
As he sat in the cabin day after day, Albert couldn’t help but think of the voyage to Africa four and a half years earlier. He’d left France with the best wishes and prayers of the French people. He had been sent out from the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society, and he even had with him a specially made piano—a gift from the Bach Society of Paris. He was returning to the same place from which he had left, except now he was a prisoner of war being transported to an unknown future in a war-ravaged enemy country.
Chapter 13
Enemy Aliens
Icy rain fell as the wrought-iron gate slammed behind Albert and Hélène. They had walked the two miles south from the Port of the Moon in the heart of Bordeaux to a two-story white stone building on a narrow road. He prayed they would get the chance to rest and recover, as well as receive some warm clothing, now that they’d arrived at their destination.
However, inside the building things went from bad to worse. They were housed in a drafty room with bare stone walls and floors and no heating. It was cold by any standard, but for Albert and Hélène, who were still accustomed to living just below the equator, it was freezing. In the cold conditions, Hélène’s cough grew worse, and Albert could see that she was exhibiting the telltale symptoms of tuberculosis. Then they both became ill with dysentery—something, ironically, Albert had avoided during his four and a half years living in Africa.
A guard told Albert they were housed in a temporary prison and would soon be transferred elsewhere. Albert wondered if he and Hélène would be separated, sent deeper into France, or shipped on to the rumored holding camp for enemy aliens in Egypt. He didn’t know; he just prayed that he and Hélène stayed together.
Just before Christmas 1917, after three weeks in Bordeaux, Albert and Hélène were loaded onto a train headed south. Along the way, other German-speaking prisoners were put aboard the train. Although Albert didn’t know their exact destination, he knew they were headed toward the Pyrenees Mountains that separate France and Spain. After Albert and Hélène had been sitting on a freezing wooden bench in a drafty carriage for seven hours, the train hissed to a halt, and everyone was ordered off. Albert and Hélène had arrived at Garaison, where they were transferred to a chapel and old monastery built in 1540 to honor the Virgin Mary’s healing powers.
Albert had often dreamed of spending Christmas in France, but this was not what he had imagined. As they were led through the monastery gates, he noticed diversity among the people being held there. At Garaison Albert discovered that he was one of about seventeen hundred civilians caught up on the wrong side of the war for various reasons. It didn’t take him long to learn the stories of some of his fellow internees: painters from Paris; Austrian and German dressmakers and shoemakers who worked for large Parisian companies; bank directors, engineers, architects, and businessmen who’d been living in French colonies. There were Catholic missionary priests from the Sahara, wearing white robes and red fezzes; travelers from North America, South America, China, and India who’d been captured at sea; and crews of captured German and Austrian merchant ships. There were also prisoners from elsewhere, including Turks, Arabs, and Greeks.
The day after arriving at Garaison, Albert was shivering in the courtyard when an internee walked up and introduced himself as Gerhard Borkeloh. “We don’t know each other,” he told Albert, “but I must thank you. You saved my wife’s life.”
“How so?” Albert asked.
“Do you remember Richard Classen, who worked for a Hamburg timber company?”
Albert nodded. He did remember the man. Richard had been a patient at the hospital in Lambaréné until the French arrested him and sent him off somewhere as a prisoner of war. Before Richard was taken away, the French colonial soldiers had allowed Albert to supply him with a collection of medicines. Before packing the medicines in Richard’s knapsack, Albert had labeled each medicine with specific instructions on its use and dosage.
“Richard ended up in the same camp in eastern France as my wife and I. She was in a bad way, and we were able to treat her with the drugs from Lambaréné. Without your help, I don’t think she would have survived this long,” Gerhard said.
