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[Page 17]
Well now to get on with my departure to work. At 6 a.m. the train came along and away we went.
We reached our destination at 1.30 p.m. the same day and set off to our barrack.
The place was named "Frenholz", a country station.
Well we reached our barrack in "Klein Boden" at 2.30 p.m. and we were issued with a sack, a spoon a basin, 2 blankets and a washing basin. We were taken to a farm house and filled our sacks with straw and then back to our barrack and this is the kind of barrack we were put into.
We were to live in what had once been a hay loft, until it got too damp for hay. Underneath were 18 pigs, a few dozen fowls, 3 rabbits, a goat, and a small pen full of rotten turnips for the pigs. The Germans called us "Swines" "Pigs", so it was "German Swines" underneath and "English Swines" above.
The next day we were awakened by one of our sentries who came up and called out in German "Auf Stahen" which means "Get up". It was 5.30 a.m. and the windows were all frosted. We were on the way to work at 5.45 a.m. wondering what our work would be. Well we soon found out. After we had walked for three quarters of an hour, with the three sentries telling us to go faster, we arrived at our work, and found we had to dig the stones and sand from between the sleepers on the railway lines, and take the sand from underneath the sleepers, and put fresh stones in the place of the sand. We finished work for dinner at 12 noon, and it was enough to make ones heart ache to see what we had to eat. It was plain turnips cooked in water and dumped into cans as it was cooked. Also the turnips were the kind generally given to cattle, in any civilised country. We started work again at 1 p.m. the sentries watching us like a cat watches a mouse, and if we stopped work you were liable to be struck with the butt end of a rifle, or a bayonet.