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[Page 39]
sent by the French Government, and the day before he made his inspection, a barrack was specially cleared out and arranged as a reading room until after the Commission when it was again turned into a sleeping room for the prisoners.
The food given to prisoners in the camp was not fit for pigs. Some days it would be all mangolds, another day, potatoes with a bit of meat with the fat extracted, and sometimes barley or black peas, and the cooking was mostly done by the Russians. Had it not been for the food sent us by the British Red Cross, thousands of English prisoners would have died. While we received our parcels it was possible for us to do without the German food provided, anyway, we drew our rations and gave them to the Italians.
The Russians would manage to scrape along by procuring some wood, and exchanging it to the British for portions of black bread as they did not want gilt, "Rusky Kaput", as they would express themselves, meaning that they had nothing, and always wanted to deal in portions of bread, biscuits, soap or tea. They used to steal potatoes from the cook-house or get them from the guards and exchange them for black bread. One Russian trying to steal potatoes from a garden near the cook-house, was shot dead by the German guard, and a mob of Russians waiting on him a few days afterwards and killed him with clubs. Shortly after, one of the German guard while pilfering potatoes was shot by the guard on duty who mistook him for a Russian.
Some of these Russians were harmless, but we came across one who was playing into the Germans hands. When he came into the