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[Page 14]
censored before and when in performance by German officers.
The concluding orchestral piece -instead of "The King" - was the old chorus "Keep the home fires burning", So popular was this song amongst us, that it was sung in German at Berlin music halls and theatres.
It was in this camp shortly before I was sent out to work in the country that I met my pal "Choate" with whom I was to have some varied experiences later. If ever a man needed a good pal it was then and I rather think I found one, it was share and share alike with us but unluckily I had nothing to share, but the English food which he was receiving in his parcels in which I now shared tasted -as they say in the Classics - "like nectar".
There were a large number of Russian prisoners in this camp consisting for the main part of men who had been working behind the front line, and through sheer weakness and exhaustion were sent back into Germany to die. I have seen them dying in twenties a day, and in a good many cases - because of the smallness of their wasted forms - they were buried two in one coffin
These Russian's lot was worse than ours for in our hungry times we did manage occasionally to get a bit of extra soup or bread from the "luckier Englishman" receiving parcels —- it was a common occurrence for them to be seen eating mouldy bread and even rushing the "pig swills".
Just after my arrival at this camp I witnessed the arrival of about onehundred and fifty Englishmen including a few Australians who had been working behind the line in captured Prance, Their condition beggars description, I have often wondered whether the German Government's idea in treating unwounded prisoners like they did was for the purpose of leading the German public to believe — from the motley clad, broken in spirit, and absolute weaklings (caused undoubtedly by the barbarous way in which they were treated)-- that the prisoners were only just captured and that that was the condition of the remainder of armies that they were fighting against. A prisoner was not acknowledged nor
accounted for to the British War Office until he arrived in German soil, so that a good many of the prisoners that cannot be traced have died in France through illtreatment received. My greatest hope is that German Officers who ordered their barbaric treatment-or even witnessed it-can be traced by the Allied Governments and punished by death --- for does not the "Book of Books" tell us "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth".
Washing conditions were something to be remembered. The water in the.taps didn't thaw until three o'clock in the