Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 28]
clogs as it was an order that no man was to leave the camp without them.
On the day of departure to the border the men would be placed in a four wheeled Army Transport Wagon, with straw thrown on the bottom for the patients to lie on, and when this waggon was full the remainder were allowed stretchers. They were sent to the guard room just outside the entrance to the camp where they received a portion of bread, and then were taken to the Railway Station, a distance of about one mile, and in most cases the patients would be taken off the stretchers and placed on the hard wooden seats of a third class compartment without even a blanket – sometimes being forced to remain more than two days without their wounds being redressed. In cases where men have been very bad on the trip to Aachen, a distance of 500 miles travelling through Hamburg, Bremen and Cologne, I have asked at these stations for the necessary dressings for the patients, but I was refused outright by the German Red Cross.
As they have apparently not yet learned the meaning of the Red Cross, I think it should be a Black Cross for them. They have always excused themselves on the ground that the British people were treating the German prisoners very badly. I told them that these men were going to England and would report immediately this inhuman conduct, and that they (the Germans) were going the right way to have reprisals.
I was naturally anxious about these boys until they arrived at Aachen where they would have a good bed, but their wounds were seldom attended to until after they passed the last Commission