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[Page 23]
inch. This frost held on for four weeks, giving us a months rest, it freezing and blocking all the Canals and Waterways, in many cases to a depth of 4 and 5 feet, and making them utterly useless. Anything like this that would hinder them and their Fatherland in any way would cause us secret exultation and satisfaction, as our thoughts were always with our "cobbers" who were still pounding away at Fritz on the West front.
At this time the contractor had singled out seven or eight of the non-workers and had us paraded to the Doctor for medical examination to see if we were bad or only malingering. He sent five of us, including myself, back to Camp as unfit. On arriving there I was given a course of massage, my complaint being in the back and kidneys. The massaging was done by some of our own A.M.C. men who had been captured, so that they did their best for us. I was marked down by "Iron Cross Jack" as fit again in three weeks, and sent from there to the "Arbeit" Compound, when on the following Sunday on being paraded for the count, were told we had some fatigues to do. I among others made myself scarce, and went about preparing my dinner, and next morning the Sergeant in charge informed us that all who had been absent would be sent out on the next working party as punishment.
A week later 40 of us were lined up and taken to the train on our way to work, this time going in a different direction altogether, and horror of horrors, in the direction of their mining centres. Conjecture was rife, and we were preparing a strike, and had determined not to go down the mines, but our fears were groundless, as we steered safely through the Coal district, and reached our destination in a snow storm at dusk where all the kiddies of the town were all lined up to see us, and pass their judgment. These same kiddies, by the way, often came to us later asking for biscuits – a sure sign of domestic misery and depression. Our Barracks this time proved to be a boarding house of three stories with heating apparatus fixed on each room, and as the Germans used the lower rooms, we enjoyed the privileges of the steam heaters, and considered ourselves to be in the best prison lager in Germany. We even had access to the bathrooms beneath, which we freely used, as our work was amongst iron, and dirty, and by this time most of us had soap of our own, and thoroughly enjoyed the bathing and washing with the result that our clothes began to assume a whiter colour but the best features of all was with improved conditions for washing we gradually ridded ourselves of vermin.
The party this time consisted of 33 Tommies and 7 Colonials, one of whom a South African, who had command of seven languages, acted as our interpreter, and proved to be a very able and tactful man for the position he had only just been freed from the Cells after recapture in an attempt to reach Holland, so I made it my business to get as much information from him as possible, but he was cute and tactful and kept everything very much to himself, for sometimes when one is in that position he must work the lone hand, for should Fritz get the slightest suspicion he were attempting or preparing for an escape, we would be sent back and punished just as much as if we had escaped.
Of course with change of address came a stoppage in our parcels, and we had to put in a month on the German issue which caused