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[Page 14]
On parade one day (of course we were all paraded three times daily and counted and given any orders or information), it was announced that the British Sergeant Major in charge would send across to us a number of parcels. When these arrived it worked out at one parcel per ten men, but even this little bit of solid tasty food was greatly appreciated, and gave us a hint that a good time was coming when we would receive our own parcels and have once more a square meal.
From these parcels we received a small piece of soap – just a cubic inch of soap. This was the only soap we had with which to wash our faces until the all eventful day when our own assistance from England should arrive. "Parcels" was the topic of the hour, or perhaps I should say of every hour of the day, as well as the night, both in our thoughts and dreams.
We had two razors issued to us but beards and moustaches were already long and thick, and the razors were not quite of the class a barber would use; one trial convinced me it would be a lesser evil to grow a beard, and in a short time the practice became universal. Most of us had chubby little beards, and little "Charlie Chaplin" moustaches, and also the woebegone expression of that celebrity.
Our next exciting parade was when we were marched before the doctor, known to us as "Iron Cross Jack", for him to determine whether we were fit for hard work or not, but he passed out very few as unfit. This led us to speculate how much longer it would be before we were sent out to work to earn our "vegetable soup", as even in a Hunland war prison, one must work to eat.
The first working party consisted of 18 men, and they left us on the morning of 21st August 1916. This caused much talk and argument about the nature of the work they would have to do, but none of us ever knew. Now that they had commenced sending us out, we began to discuss who would be in the next party, but as they were mostly picked alphabetically, our guesses went astray. If some thought "Oh, I am not fit to go to work" and lived in hopes that they would be able to remain in Camp until at least their parcels came, but if "Iron Cross Jack" said they were fit, fit they were and had to go.
The next party to go had their names read out on parade, and were told that they would leave on Monday. When the day came I found that I was included, and we were marched to the Quartermaster's Stores and were issued with another bowl, a larger one for washing ourselves in, a shirt, a pair of wooden clogs, and two pairs of toe rags to act as socks, and if one's jacket or trousers were not fit to be seen, he would receive a German military pair of corduroy trousers, which of course were second hand, and generally large enough for two or three of us as we then were. We also had a towel, a little sharp corner cap; these caps were not issued to us until three weeks after arrival, during which time some of us had [indecipherable] handkerchiefs, but the majority of us used our bowls as caps. I was perhaps more fortunate than most