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[Page 16]
interpreter called us down for something to eat, and we were not slow in responding. We went down into the yard and handed our bowls through the barbed wire, and had them filled with 'potato mash" which meant so much to us, and which although just off the fire and very hot, we ate voraciously, burning mouths and throats. This we did not seem to mind as it was such a glorious feeling that we were eating something a little bit solid. Our dishes were soon emptied, but the lady of the house told us that there was a little left in the boiler, and if we wanted any more we could have it. The result was we all lined up again and got as mush as possible. Imagine if you can our feelings of satisfaction and pleasure at once more being "full" and the relief of mind with which we went to bed, more especially as our interpreter told us we were to have five meals per day, and as this was the best we had had since capture our hopes and expectations were naturally running riot. The excitement of a good meal over, we set to preparing for bed. Our floor space was not very extensive and the beds were placed one above the other, but we took them down and spread them singly. This left very little room indeed, but we got into our cots and slept full of joyful anticipation and dreams of happier days and bigger meals. At 5.30 a.m. next morning the sentries were shouting "rouse" (treten) or "get out" (aufgehen), and we then received a drink of their burnt rye water or coffee for breakfast, and at 6.15 we were formed up in the street to march to our work.
On account of recent rains the grass was wet and the lanes muddy, so that our feet were soon as wet as the grass. Our sentries did not know just where the work was, and took us a little out of the way, so that our day was not as long as it might have been. The first introduction we had to the work was the sight of a miniature engine and train of trucks, which some German "civies" and some soldier convalescents were emptying. (Convalescent soldiers in Germany are presented with work instead of sports, and often during their furlough will work to earn a little money). There were women and girls of from 18 to 60 years of age levelling the earth as it was tipped out. It was a railway embankment in the making, but this was not to be our place of toil, for we were taken past these and formed up in front of a tool shed from which we received a shovel each. At least they called them shovels, but they appeared to us more like small scoops. The handles were ash saplings and very rough, and as the wood dried they it cracked and caused us many a blister, and by and by hard cracked corns which would often bleed, but as time went on our hands became hardened, and we got used to the heavy shovels. We were taken to a bend in the river which was to be straightened by a canal in order to allow the water to run under the embankment. Along the river ran a light railway line on which were tip trucks of a carrying capacity of a yard and a half of earth; when we had filled them we had to push them along to the other bend and tip them into the river.
Our foreman proved to be one of the old Prussian "Kulturist" who would not allow us to sing , whistle or make any noise, one who tried to get as much work as possible from his gang of "Convicts". He made himself disagreeable in every way with the result that one day we decided any punishment we might get could not be worse that his treatment, and one and all refused to work under him, and asked to be sent back to camp. Of course he created a terrible noise, but on the arrival