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[Page 38]
amongst the needy ones in camp.
A noticeable thing was a field cannon standing outside the wires, trained on to the English Barrack room, being at a distance of twenty-five yards away.
Regarding the attempted formation of the German Irish Brigade, I met a number of Irishmen who were in the camp when [the Germans tried to formulate this plan. About 2000 Irishmen with a big percentage of regular army men were concentrated at this camp, given particularly tasty food and allowed very easy (treatment for a month or so. Distributed throughout the camp were some thirty or so Germanised Irishmen wearing the uniform of the proposed corps, Notices were posted in all the barracks stating particulars as to pay, conditions etc and Germany's intention of liberating Ireland from the tyrannical English Government after the war. Casement on several occasions tried to make speeches to the men, but was invariably howled down. He then tried to get the men's confidence by mixing amongst them in the camp, and the story is told about him getting into holts with one of the camp cooks who knocked him over the head with his implement of office, which happened to be a large wooden ladle.
Easy measures were found to be of no avail and the Germans commenced bad treatment - plenty of standing to attention for [long periods, and the old starvation cure. Food parcels were opened up in front of the men and were then taken away. Still there were no recruits to speak of,for out of a large number of pen, only a score of renegade Englishmen turned coats, and that was only after some weeks of very bad treatment.
I was told that the sentries, whenever they walked into a barrack room (without there were a particularly strong number of them) would have missiles of all kinds thrown at them.
Finding that both 'ideas' wouldn't materialize, the camp was broken up and the Irishmen despatched to salt and coal mines and some to punishment camps. One camp I remember being at Geisen, where a number of Irishmen went mad.
In December 1917 many of the Italian prisoners were interned in this Limburg camp. They fell in for very bad treatment being on the usual "starvation diet". One certain cold winter Sunday they were compelled to stand to attention in the snow for about six hours because of the fact of them having been seen accepting food and clothing from the English prisoners.
One outstanding feature at this camp was the splendid physique of the Englishmen, who for the most part were out of the regular Guard regiments.
Our stay here was limited to a month, when we were taken back to Munster, spending about thirty hours in the train under an armed escort.