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[Page 41]
off in an hour's time under escort for an unknown destination.
All my personal effects were taken from me and I was examined to see that I was taking nothing away that was against the interests of the "fatherland".
I left the camp - not as the Germans recently repatriated from Australia, with a limitation 80 lbs baggage weight, £50 notes but in just what I stood up in and a five mark note (not forgetting about 10 lbs of foodstuffs). On arriving at Munster Railway Station I was surprised to find myself amongst fifteen or so Englishmen, several of whom were absolutely incapacitated, the rest being more or less helpless.
I must admit that on seeing these helpless chaps I felt that in my pretense of fits I was doing an injustice to some poor wounded Englishman, but rightly or wrongly I wanted to be a free man and I had paid dearly for my two unsuccessful attempts to regain my liberty.
We were given second class accomodation in the train and journeyed as far as Cologne where we disentrained and rested a few hours. Here we were joined by other parties from different
camps and then continued our journey to Aachen. Insufficient orderlies were in attendance so that the few of us that could use our limbs had to assist in carrying stretcher cases and baggage, though we were travelling almost sixteen hours we received no food or hot drinks from the Germans,
Upon arrival at Aachen (sometimes called Aix la chapelle)
we were motored a distance of a few hundred yards to the [Exchange Hospital, where everything was spick and span, the various wards being attended to by nurses. Here the german food was particularly tasty, it being very evident that these belated kindnesses were being given so that good impressions might be carried back to England.
At last came the final board by the German Doctors , when 196 of us, including myself, passed the test. The test in my case being having my spine looked at and my eyes peered into (probably to see whether I looked truthful when I answered various questions) Some thirteen or more failed to pass and were sent back into Germany - one case, strange to say, being a genuine sufferer of the complaint I was supposed to have.
One particularly sad case amongst those who passed as that of an Australian who had only been a prisoner for a few months, having had an eye shot out with a revolver, and then the sight had gradually gone out of his other eye. He was clad in a clothes that would have insulted an Australian scarecrow, wearing wooden sabots for boots, and receiving no attention for a discharge coming from his missing eye socket. One Englishman amongst