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[Page 15]
afternoon - if you were lucky you possessed a small, piece of soap - so cold was it that when combing my "hair after washing, icicles would be on the comb.
I well remember a certain day during the cold stretch
- it was Feby 4th 1917 - reckoned in the German papers to have been the coldest day for twenty-five years, I had gone out with a small working party to a brick kiln adjacent to the camp, our job was digging bricks out of the frozen ground and as my breakfast that morning had been a bowl of substitute coffee it was not surprising when I went out in a faint luckily I was caught when falling, otherwise with the loose bricks about I may have caught a "souvenir" out of it.
Anyway when I came to I was compelled to make some pretence at working - I may state that from experience one took great stock of his sentry before arguing the point with him, if he appeared at all weak or "blase" you loafed at your Job, If he appeared to he of the "Prussian" type or "he was one of those elderly patriots - who only knew the war from their papers- you did just what you were told rather than run the risk of "falling foul" with him, for you didn't know what he was capable of doing--- it might he the cold steel of his bayonet or a gentle reminder with the butt of "his rifle".
On a certain occasion 1 witnessed an elderly 'Frenchman beaten unconscious with the flat of a sword by a German officer, his offence being that he didn't get out of the road quick enough when passing this officer.
Early in March I was examined, with forty other Englishmen, & classified as fit for "arbide" (work) by the camp Doctor.