August 19, 2025 • 21 mins
Delve into the gripping true story of M. C. Simmons, a Canadian soldier who found himself at the mercy of the German Army during the tumultuous early days of World War I. This narrative chronicles his harrowing sixteen months as a prisoner of war, detailing his interactions with fellow captives from Allied forces, as well as his insightful observations of his captors and their homeland. Most strikingly, we follow Simmons through his daring escape attempts—each more audacious than the last—his subsequent recaptures and punishments, and the perilous journey through enemy territory that defined his relentless spirit. As McClung notes, Private Simmons is a close and accurate observer who sees clearly and talks well. He tells a straightforward, unadorned tale, every sentence of which is true, and convincing. Prepare to be captivated by a story of resilience and courage.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section sixteen of Three Times and Out by Nellie mc lung.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Chapter eighteen
parnavinkl Camp. The key turned at last, entering the guard
with face as impassive as ever, motioned to me to
(00:23):
sweep out. I wondered if I could have mistaken the
number of days, or if we were going to get
longer than the two weeks. He did not enlighten me.
I was taken out to wash and filled my brown
pitcher at the tap, just as usual. Then came the
moment of tense anxiety. Would he lock me in? He
(00:48):
gave me the usual allowance of bread, which I put
in my pocket as a man who was going on
a journey and wants to be on his way without
waiting to eat. Then he motioned to me to come out,
and I knew we were free. Ted was at the
door of his cell, and we followed the guard downstairs
(01:09):
without speaking. In the room below, our things were given
back to us. I dared not examine my cap to
see if my maps had been touched, but I could
not keep from turning it around as if to be
sure it was mine. Certainly it looked all right. Our
two little parcels, still unopened, were returned to us, and
(01:32):
the guard from Venemore who had come for us, had
brought one of the prisoners with him to carry our
stuff that had been left there, blankets, wash basin, clogs,
et cetera. From the prisoner, we got the news of
the camp. How are the folks at home, we asked him.
Ninety of the worst ones since you, two fellows and
(01:53):
Bromley left were taken to another camp. And when they
were moving them, mc kinnon and the other fellow beat it.
But we were afraid they were caught. Why, we asked him,
They catch them all. Nobody gets out of Germany alive.
You talk like a guard, Ted said, Well, said the boy.
(02:16):
I am sorry. I forget his name. Look here, who
do you know that has got away? You didn't, Bromley didn't.
The two frenchmen who went the night before you went.
Didn't do you hear of any who did? Keep your
ear to the ground, and you will, said Ted. They'll
(02:38):
shoot you the next time, He said earnestly. If I
were you, I wouldn't try it. Then the guard came
and we could say no more again. We were taken
to the station and put on the train. Our hands
were not tied this time. We were just ordinary prisoners
now we had done ours. Besides, I suppose they knew
(03:02):
we shouldn't run far. That had been taken out of
us by the cells. But our good spirits came back
when the train started. We went east towards Rotenburg, through
the same sort of low marshy country we had traveled before,
with scrubby trees and plenty of heather moor. We passed
(03:23):
through Bremen again, where we got a glimpse of white sails,
and then none to Rottenburg, where we changed cars and
had to wait for two hours. Of course, we were hungry.
The Oldenburg prison had not sent us out well fed
to meet the world, and the one slice of bread
had gone. But we had prison stamps, and our guard
(03:46):
took us to the lunch counter at Rotenberg, where we
got a cup of real coffee, some bread, and an orange.
The guard paid for what we got with his own money,
excepting our stamps in payment. Our our stamps were good
only at Vnimore Camp, having the name Venemore stamped on them.
(04:06):
I suppose we were two tough looking characters. The people
seemed to think so, for they looked at us with
startled faces, and a little girl who was crossing the
platform ran back in alarm to her mother when she
saw us coming. We arrived at dinstead after nightfall and
walked out a mile along a rough road to the camp,
(04:28):
which was one of the Talalager group Telalager one. We
saw that it consisted of two huts, and when we
entered the hut to which we were taken, we saw
nothing but Russians. Pale faced, dark eyed, bearded Russians. They
were sitting around hardly speaking to each other, some mending
(04:50):
their clothes, some reading, some staring idly ahead of them.
We were beginning to be afraid they had sent us
to a camp where there was no one but Russian,
until we saw some British at the other end. By jove,
I'll bet you're hungry, a big fellow said, reaching up
into his bunk and bringing out a pasteboard parcel. Here
(05:12):
you are, mate, there's a bit of cheese and biscuits.
I've a bit of water heating too. We'll get you
something to drink, get something into you. We ain't bad
done for you with our parcels. Comin regular. The other
men brought out boxes too, currant loaf, sardines, fruit cake,
and chocolate. There were three coal stoves in the room,
(05:34):
and on one of these a pan of water was steaming.
They had condensed milk and cocoa and made us up
mugs of it, and I never anywhere tasted anything so good.
There were two tiers of bunks in the room, but
around the wall there was an open space where there
were some little tables. Two of the Englishmen who were
(05:56):
playing cards, put them away and offered us their table. Here, boys,
be comfortable, sit right down here, and let us see
you eat. We let them see us. We ate like wolfhounds.
We ate not until we were satisfied, but until we
were ashamed. And still the invitations to eat were heard
(06:18):
on every side. We were welcome to the last crumb
they had. When at last we stopped, they began to
tell us about the camp. It seemed that the distinguishing
feature was lice. It had never been fumigated, and the
condition was indescribable. We're bad enough, one of the Englishmen said,
(06:41):
But the Russians are in holes. Then they told us
what they had done to attract the attention of the authorities.
The branch camps are never inspected or visited, as are
the main camps such as Tellalager itself and Geesen, and
so conditions in the out of the wake camps have
been allowed to sink far below the level of these.
(07:04):
We each wrote a card to some one in England
telling them about the lice. We would have stretched it
if we could, but we couldn't. We drew pictures and
told what these lice could do. Especially we told about
the Russians and how bad they were. There are twenty
one of us, and there went out twenty one cards,
all dealing with the same subject. The censor began to
(07:28):
feel Crawley, I'll bet before he got far into reading them,
and he would not let one of those cards out
of Germany. It wouldn't have sounded very good to the
neutral countries. So along came one of the head officers.
He came in swaggering, but by George, he went out scratching,
and he certainly got something moving. We're all going down
(07:49):
to sella lager tomorrow to be fumigated, and while we're
out there's going to be a real old fashioned house cleaning.
You're just in time, boys, if you got any. We
did not have any, We said when we came, well,
you'll get them here just sitting around. They're all over
the floor and crawl up the leg of your chair.
(08:10):
They crawl up the wall and across the ceiling, and
drop down on your head and down the back of
your collar. They're in the walls and in the beds now.
But their days are numbered, for we are all going
up to tell Lager tomorrow to be fumigated. They're running
a special train and taking us all. That night Ted
(08:30):
and I slept on two benches in the middle of
the room, but we found that what the boys said
was true. They had crawled up on us, or else
had fallen from the ceiling or both. We had them.
But the next day we made the trip to Telalager
by special train, the Louse train. It was called the Fumigator.
(08:53):
Was the same as at Geesen, and it did its
work well. While the clothes were baking, we stood in
a well heated room to wait for them. The British
and French, having received parcels, were in good condition, but
the Russians, who had to depend entirely on the prison fare,
were a pitiful sight. They looked when undressed like the
(09:16):
India famine victims, with their washboard ribs and protruding stomachs,
dull eyes and parched skin. The sores caused by the
lice were deep and raw, and that these conditions, together
with the bad water and bad food, had had fatal
results could be seen in the Russian cemetery at salalagar I,
(09:39):
where the white Russian crosses stand row on row. The
treatment of Russian prisoners will be a hard thing for
Germany to explain to the nations when the war is over.
Parnavinkl was the name of the village near salalagar I,
and this name was printed on the prison stamps which
(09:59):
we used. The camp was built on a better place
than the last one and it was well drained, but
the water was bad and unfit to drink unless boiled.
As the spring came on, many of the Russians went
out to work with the farmers, and working parties, mostly
made up of Russians, were sent out each day. Their
(10:22):
work was to dig ditches through the marshes to reclaim
the land. To these working parties, soup was sent out
in the middle of the day and I wishing to
gain a knowledge of the country, volunteered for Supentragen. A
large pot constructed to hold the heat by having a
smaller one inside which held the soup, was carried by
(10:45):
two of us with a stick through the handle to
the place where the Russians were working, And while they
were attending to the soup, we looked around and learned
what we could of the country. I saw a method
of smoking meat which was new to me at a
farmhouse near where the Russians were making a road edwards,
and I with some others, had carried out the soup.
(11:08):
The Russians usually ate their soup in the cow stable
part of the house, but the British and Canadians went
right into the kitchen. In this house everything was under
one roof, that is, cows, chickens, kitchen and living room,
and from the roof of the kitchen the hams were hung.
The kitchen stove had two or three lengths of pipe,
(11:29):
just enough to start the smoke in the right direction,
but not enough to lead it out of the house.
Up among the beams, it wound and curled and twisted,
wrapping the hams round and round, and then found its
way out in the best way it could. Of course,
some of it wandered down to the kitchen where the
women worked, and I suppose it bothered them. But women
(11:53):
are the suffering sex in Germany. A little smoke in
their eyes is not here or there. The houses we
saw had thatched roofs with plastered walls, and I think
in every case the cow stable was attached. Dairying was
the chief industry, that and the raising of pigs. For
(12:13):
the land is poor and marshy. Still, if the war
lasts long enough, the bad lands of Germany will be
largely reclaimed by the labor of Russian prisoners. It's cheap
and plentiful. There were ninety thousand of them bagged in
one battle in the early days of the war at
the Missourian Lakes. The Russians are, for the most part simple,
(12:38):
honest fellows, very sad and plaintive, and deserving of better
treatment than they have had when the Russians had gone
out to work, leaving only the sick ones and the
English and French. Sometimes there were not enough well prisoners
for Supentragen. For the British were clever in the matter
(12:58):
of feigning sickness. The Rivie was in charge of a
doctor and a medical sergeant, who gave exemption from work
very easily. Then there were ways of getting sick which
were confusing to doctors. Some one found out how to
raise a swelling, and there was quite an epidemic of
swollen wrists and ankles. A little lump of earth in
(13:20):
a handkerchief pounded gently on the place for twenty minutes
or so would bring the desired result. Soap pills will
raise the temperature. Tobacco eden will derange the heart. These
are well known methods of achieving sick leave. I had
away all my own. I had a loose toe nail
(13:41):
quite ready to come off, but I noticed it in
time and took great care not to let it come off.
Then I went to the doctor to have it removed.
On that I got exemption till the nail grew. One
day at Parnavinkle, Edwards and I were called into the
Comandant's office, whither we went with many misgivings. We did
(14:04):
not know how much he knew of us and our plans,
but the honest man only wanted to pay us. Edwards
had worked quite a bit at Ventimore, but I couldn't
remember that I had worked at all. However, he insisted
that I had one and a half days to my
credit and paid me twenty seven fennings or six and
(14:25):
three quarters cents. I remembered then that I had volunteered
for work on the bog for the purpose of seeing
what the country was like around the camp. I signed
a receipt for the amount he gave me, and the
transaction was entered in a book, and the receipt went
back to the head camp. Look at that, said ted,
(14:48):
they starve us, but if we work, they will pay us,
even taking considerable pains to thrust our wages upon us.
Of a truth, they are a spotty p However, the
reason for paying us for our work was not so
much their desire to give the laborer his hire as
(15:09):
that the receipts might be shown to visitors and appear
in their records. The Russians had a crucifix at the
end of the hut which they occupied, and a picture
of the Virgin and the Holy Child, before which they
bowed and crossed themselves in their evening devotions. Not all
of them took part. There were some unbelieving brothers who
(15:30):
sat morosely back and took no notice. Wrapped in their
own sad thoughts, I wondered what they thought of it.
All the others humbly knelt and prayed and cried out
their sorrows before the crucifix. Their hymns were weird and plaintive,
yet full of a heroic hope that God had not forgotten.
(15:53):
One of them told me that God bottles up the
tears of his saints, hears their cry, and in his
own good time will deliver all who trust in him.
The deliverance has already come to many of them, the
white crossed graves beyond the marsh can prove. But surely
somewhere an account is being kept of their sorrows and
(16:16):
their wrongs, and some day will come the reckoning. Germany
deserves the contempt of all nations, if it were for
nothing else than her treatment of the Russian prisoners. When
my toe nail began to grow on, I got permanent
exemption from work because of my shoulder, and was given
(16:37):
the light task of keeping clear the ditches that ran
close beside the huts. I often volunteered on parcel parties,
for I liked the mile and a half walk down
the road through the village of Parnavinkel to Salzingen, where
there was a railway station and post office. Once in
a while I saw German women sending parcels to soldiers
(16:58):
at the front. The road lay through low lying land
with scrubby trees. There was little to see, but it
was a pleasure to get out of the camp with
its depressing atmosphere. In Parnavinkl there was an implement dealer
who sold deering machinery, mowers and rakes, and yet I
(17:19):
never saw either a mower or a rake working. I
saw women cutting hay with scythes, and remember well on
one trip to the post office I saw an old woman,
bare legged with wooden clogs, who should have been sitting
in a rocking chair, swinging her scythe through some hay,
and she was doing it well too. The scarcity of
(17:42):
horses probably accounted for the mowers and rakes not being used,
cows being somewhat too slow in their gait to give
good results. Although Hanover is noted for its horses, the
needs of the army seemed to have depleted the country
and I saw very few. Every one rides a bicycle
(18:03):
I think I saw less than a dozen automobiles. Having
been exempted from work. I was around the camp all day,
and one day found a four legged affair with a
ring on the top big enough to hold a wash basin.
In this I saw a possibility of making a stove below.
I put a piece of tin part of a parcel
(18:24):
box to hold the fire, with a couple of bricks
under it to save the floor, and then using the
wooden parcel boxes for fuel, I was ready to look
about for ingredients to make mulligan. There is nothing narrow
or binding about the word mulligan. Mulligan can be made
of anything. It all depended on what we had on
(18:46):
this stove. I made some very acceptable mulligan out of
young turnip tops. They had been brought to the camp
when very small seedlings from a farmer's field where one
of our boys had been working, and transplanted in the
prison yard. I only used the outside leaves and let
them go on growing. Potatoes stolen from the guard's garden.
(19:08):
Oxocubes sent in a parcel. Oyster biscuits also sent in
a parcel, salt and pepper and water. The turnip tops
I put in the bottom of the dish, then laid
on the potatoes, covering with water and adding salt. I
then covered this with another wash basin and started my fire.
(19:31):
We were not allowed to have fires, and this gave
the mulligan all the charm of the forbidden. When it
was cooked, I added the ox ocubes and the oyster biscuit,
and mashed all together with part of the lid of
a box, and the mulligan was ready. The boys were
not critical, and I believe I could get from any
(19:52):
one of them a recommendation for a cook's position. In
the winter, we had had no trouble about a fire,
for the stoves were going, and we made our mulligan
and boiled water for tea on them. Our guards were
ordinary soldiers, sometimes those who had been wounded or were
sick and were now convalescent, and we had all sorts.
(20:16):
Usually the n c o S were the more severe.
The privates did not bother much about us. They had
troubles enough of their own. At the school garden, where
the commandant lived, I went to work one day and
made the acquaintance of his little son, a blue eyed
cherub of four or five years, who addressed me as
(20:38):
English a shrine, which was I suppose the way he
had heard his father speak of us. He did it
quite without malice, though, and no doubt thought that was
our proper name. He must have thought the shrine family
rather a large one. It was about May I think
that a letter came from my brother Flint, telling me
(21:00):
he was sending me some of the cream cheese I
was so fond of, and I knew my compass was
on the way. In about three weeks the parcel came,
and I was careful to open the cheese when alone.
The lead foil had every appearance of being undisturbed, but
in the middle of it I found the compass. After
(21:24):
that we talked over our plans for escape. Edwards and
I were the only Canadians in the camp, and we
were determined to make a break as soon as the
nights got longer. In the early summer, when the daylight
lasts so long, we knew we should have no chance,
for there were only four or five hours of darkness.
(21:45):
But in August we hoped to start for home. End
of section sixteen.
Section sixteen of Three Times and Out by Nellie mc lung.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Chapter eighteen
parnavinkl Camp. The key turned at last, entering the guard
with face as impassive as ever, motioned to me to
(00:23):
sweep out. I wondered if I could have mistaken the
number of days, or if we were going to get
longer than the two weeks. He did not enlighten me.
I was taken out to wash and filled my brown
pitcher at the tap, just as usual. Then came the
moment of tense anxiety. Would he lock me in? He
(00:48):
gave me the usual allowance of bread, which I put
in my pocket as a man who was going on
a journey and wants to be on his way without
waiting to eat. Then he motioned to me to come out,
and I knew we were free. Ted was at the
door of his cell, and we followed the guard downstairs
(01:09):
without speaking. In the room below, our things were given
back to us. I dared not examine my cap to
see if my maps had been touched, but I could
not keep from turning it around as if to be
sure it was mine. Certainly it looked all right. Our
two little parcels, still unopened, were returned to us, and
(01:32):
the guard from Venemore who had come for us, had
brought one of the prisoners with him to carry our
stuff that had been left there, blankets, wash basin, clogs,
et cetera. From the prisoner, we got the news of
the camp. How are the folks at home, we asked him.
Ninety of the worst ones since you, two fellows and
(01:53):
Bromley left were taken to another camp. And when they
were moving them, mc kinnon and the other fellow beat it.
But we were afraid they were caught. Why, we asked him,
They catch them all. Nobody gets out of Germany alive.
You talk like a guard, Ted said, Well, said the boy.
(02:16):
I am sorry. I forget his name. Look here, who
do you know that has got away? You didn't, Bromley didn't.
The two frenchmen who went the night before you went.
Didn't do you hear of any who did? Keep your
ear to the ground, and you will, said Ted. They'll
(02:38):
shoot you the next time, He said earnestly. If I
were you, I wouldn't try it. Then the guard came
and we could say no more again. We were taken
to the station and put on the train. Our hands
were not tied this time. We were just ordinary prisoners
now we had done ours. Besides, I suppose they knew
(03:02):
we shouldn't run far. That had been taken out of
us by the cells. But our good spirits came back
when the train started. We went east towards Rotenburg, through
the same sort of low marshy country we had traveled before,
with scrubby trees and plenty of heather moor. We passed
(03:23):
through Bremen again, where we got a glimpse of white sails,
and then none to Rottenburg, where we changed cars and
had to wait for two hours. Of course, we were hungry.
The Oldenburg prison had not sent us out well fed
to meet the world, and the one slice of bread
had gone. But we had prison stamps, and our guard
(03:46):
took us to the lunch counter at Rotenberg, where we
got a cup of real coffee, some bread, and an orange.
The guard paid for what we got with his own money,
excepting our stamps in payment. Our our stamps were good
only at Vnimore Camp, having the name Venemore stamped on them.
(04:06):
I suppose we were two tough looking characters. The people
seemed to think so, for they looked at us with
startled faces, and a little girl who was crossing the
platform ran back in alarm to her mother when she
saw us coming. We arrived at dinstead after nightfall and
walked out a mile along a rough road to the camp,
(04:28):
which was one of the Talalager group Telalager one. We
saw that it consisted of two huts, and when we
entered the hut to which we were taken, we saw
nothing but Russians. Pale faced, dark eyed, bearded Russians. They
were sitting around hardly speaking to each other, some mending
(04:50):
their clothes, some reading, some staring idly ahead of them.
We were beginning to be afraid they had sent us
to a camp where there was no one but Russian,
until we saw some British at the other end. By jove,
I'll bet you're hungry, a big fellow said, reaching up
into his bunk and bringing out a pasteboard parcel. Here
(05:12):
you are, mate, there's a bit of cheese and biscuits.
I've a bit of water heating too. We'll get you
something to drink, get something into you. We ain't bad
done for you with our parcels. Comin regular. The other
men brought out boxes too, currant loaf, sardines, fruit cake,
and chocolate. There were three coal stoves in the room,
(05:34):
and on one of these a pan of water was steaming.
They had condensed milk and cocoa and made us up
mugs of it, and I never anywhere tasted anything so good.
There were two tiers of bunks in the room, but
around the wall there was an open space where there
were some little tables. Two of the Englishmen who were
(05:56):
playing cards, put them away and offered us their table. Here, boys,
be comfortable, sit right down here, and let us see
you eat. We let them see us. We ate like wolfhounds.
We ate not until we were satisfied, but until we
were ashamed. And still the invitations to eat were heard
(06:18):
on every side. We were welcome to the last crumb
they had. When at last we stopped, they began to
tell us about the camp. It seemed that the distinguishing
feature was lice. It had never been fumigated, and the
condition was indescribable. We're bad enough, one of the Englishmen said,
(06:41):
But the Russians are in holes. Then they told us
what they had done to attract the attention of the authorities.
The branch camps are never inspected or visited, as are
the main camps such as Tellalager itself and Geesen, and
so conditions in the out of the wake camps have
been allowed to sink far below the level of these.
(07:04):
We each wrote a card to some one in England
telling them about the lice. We would have stretched it
if we could, but we couldn't. We drew pictures and
told what these lice could do. Especially we told about
the Russians and how bad they were. There are twenty
one of us, and there went out twenty one cards,
all dealing with the same subject. The censor began to
(07:28):
feel Crawley, I'll bet before he got far into reading them,
and he would not let one of those cards out
of Germany. It wouldn't have sounded very good to the
neutral countries. So along came one of the head officers.
He came in swaggering, but by George, he went out scratching,
and he certainly got something moving. We're all going down
(07:49):
to sella lager tomorrow to be fumigated, and while we're
out there's going to be a real old fashioned house cleaning.
You're just in time, boys, if you got any. We
did not have any, We said when we came, well,
you'll get them here just sitting around. They're all over
the floor and crawl up the leg of your chair.
(08:10):
They crawl up the wall and across the ceiling, and
drop down on your head and down the back of
your collar. They're in the walls and in the beds now.
But their days are numbered, for we are all going
up to tell Lager tomorrow to be fumigated. They're running
a special train and taking us all. That night Ted
(08:30):
and I slept on two benches in the middle of
the room, but we found that what the boys said
was true. They had crawled up on us, or else
had fallen from the ceiling or both. We had them.
But the next day we made the trip to Telalager
by special train, the Louse train. It was called the Fumigator.
(08:53):
Was the same as at Geesen, and it did its
work well. While the clothes were baking, we stood in
a well heated room to wait for them. The British
and French, having received parcels, were in good condition, but
the Russians, who had to depend entirely on the prison fare,
were a pitiful sight. They looked when undressed like the
(09:16):
India famine victims, with their washboard ribs and protruding stomachs,
dull eyes and parched skin. The sores caused by the
lice were deep and raw, and that these conditions, together
with the bad water and bad food, had had fatal
results could be seen in the Russian cemetery at salalagar I,
(09:39):
where the white Russian crosses stand row on row. The
treatment of Russian prisoners will be a hard thing for
Germany to explain to the nations when the war is over.
Parnavinkl was the name of the village near salalagar I,
and this name was printed on the prison stamps which
(09:59):
we used. The camp was built on a better place
than the last one and it was well drained, but
the water was bad and unfit to drink unless boiled.
As the spring came on, many of the Russians went
out to work with the farmers, and working parties, mostly
made up of Russians, were sent out each day. Their
(10:22):
work was to dig ditches through the marshes to reclaim
the land. To these working parties, soup was sent out
in the middle of the day and I wishing to
gain a knowledge of the country, volunteered for Supentragen. A
large pot constructed to hold the heat by having a
smaller one inside which held the soup, was carried by
(10:45):
two of us with a stick through the handle to
the place where the Russians were working, And while they
were attending to the soup, we looked around and learned
what we could of the country. I saw a method
of smoking meat which was new to me at a
farmhouse near where the Russians were making a road edwards,
and I with some others, had carried out the soup.
(11:08):
The Russians usually ate their soup in the cow stable
part of the house, but the British and Canadians went
right into the kitchen. In this house everything was under
one roof, that is, cows, chickens, kitchen and living room,
and from the roof of the kitchen the hams were hung.
The kitchen stove had two or three lengths of pipe,
(11:29):
just enough to start the smoke in the right direction,
but not enough to lead it out of the house.
Up among the beams, it wound and curled and twisted,
wrapping the hams round and round, and then found its
way out in the best way it could. Of course,
some of it wandered down to the kitchen where the
women worked, and I suppose it bothered them. But women
(11:53):
are the suffering sex in Germany. A little smoke in
their eyes is not here or there. The houses we
saw had thatched roofs with plastered walls, and I think
in every case the cow stable was attached. Dairying was
the chief industry, that and the raising of pigs. For
(12:13):
the land is poor and marshy. Still, if the war
lasts long enough, the bad lands of Germany will be
largely reclaimed by the labor of Russian prisoners. It's cheap
and plentiful. There were ninety thousand of them bagged in
one battle in the early days of the war at
the Missourian Lakes. The Russians are, for the most part simple,
(12:38):
honest fellows, very sad and plaintive, and deserving of better
treatment than they have had when the Russians had gone
out to work, leaving only the sick ones and the
English and French. Sometimes there were not enough well prisoners
for Supentragen. For the British were clever in the matter
(12:58):
of feigning sickness. The Rivie was in charge of a
doctor and a medical sergeant, who gave exemption from work
very easily. Then there were ways of getting sick which
were confusing to doctors. Some one found out how to
raise a swelling, and there was quite an epidemic of
swollen wrists and ankles. A little lump of earth in
(13:20):
a handkerchief pounded gently on the place for twenty minutes
or so would bring the desired result. Soap pills will
raise the temperature. Tobacco eden will derange the heart. These
are well known methods of achieving sick leave. I had
away all my own. I had a loose toe nail
(13:41):
quite ready to come off, but I noticed it in
time and took great care not to let it come off.
Then I went to the doctor to have it removed.
On that I got exemption till the nail grew. One
day at Parnavinkle, Edwards and I were called into the
Comandant's office, whither we went with many misgivings. We did
(14:04):
not know how much he knew of us and our plans,
but the honest man only wanted to pay us. Edwards
had worked quite a bit at Ventimore, but I couldn't
remember that I had worked at all. However, he insisted
that I had one and a half days to my
credit and paid me twenty seven fennings or six and
(14:25):
three quarters cents. I remembered then that I had volunteered
for work on the bog for the purpose of seeing
what the country was like around the camp. I signed
a receipt for the amount he gave me, and the
transaction was entered in a book, and the receipt went
back to the head camp. Look at that, said ted,
(14:48):
they starve us, but if we work, they will pay us,
even taking considerable pains to thrust our wages upon us.
Of a truth, they are a spotty p However, the
reason for paying us for our work was not so
much their desire to give the laborer his hire as
(15:09):
that the receipts might be shown to visitors and appear
in their records. The Russians had a crucifix at the
end of the hut which they occupied, and a picture
of the Virgin and the Holy Child, before which they
bowed and crossed themselves in their evening devotions. Not all
of them took part. There were some unbelieving brothers who
(15:30):
sat morosely back and took no notice. Wrapped in their
own sad thoughts, I wondered what they thought of it.
All the others humbly knelt and prayed and cried out
their sorrows before the crucifix. Their hymns were weird and plaintive,
yet full of a heroic hope that God had not forgotten.
(15:53):
One of them told me that God bottles up the
tears of his saints, hears their cry, and in his
own good time will deliver all who trust in him.
The deliverance has already come to many of them, the
white crossed graves beyond the marsh can prove. But surely
somewhere an account is being kept of their sorrows and
(16:16):
their wrongs, and some day will come the reckoning. Germany
deserves the contempt of all nations, if it were for
nothing else than her treatment of the Russian prisoners. When
my toe nail began to grow on, I got permanent
exemption from work because of my shoulder, and was given
(16:37):
the light task of keeping clear the ditches that ran
close beside the huts. I often volunteered on parcel parties,
for I liked the mile and a half walk down
the road through the village of Parnavinkel to Salzingen, where
there was a railway station and post office. Once in
a while I saw German women sending parcels to soldiers
(16:58):
at the front. The road lay through low lying land
with scrubby trees. There was little to see, but it
was a pleasure to get out of the camp with
its depressing atmosphere. In Parnavinkl there was an implement dealer
who sold deering machinery, mowers and rakes, and yet I
(17:19):
never saw either a mower or a rake working. I
saw women cutting hay with scythes, and remember well on
one trip to the post office I saw an old woman,
bare legged with wooden clogs, who should have been sitting
in a rocking chair, swinging her scythe through some hay,
and she was doing it well too. The scarcity of
(17:42):
horses probably accounted for the mowers and rakes not being used,
cows being somewhat too slow in their gait to give
good results. Although Hanover is noted for its horses, the
needs of the army seemed to have depleted the country
and I saw very few. Every one rides a bicycle
(18:03):
I think I saw less than a dozen automobiles. Having
been exempted from work. I was around the camp all day,
and one day found a four legged affair with a
ring on the top big enough to hold a wash basin.
In this I saw a possibility of making a stove below.
I put a piece of tin part of a parcel
(18:24):
box to hold the fire, with a couple of bricks
under it to save the floor, and then using the
wooden parcel boxes for fuel, I was ready to look
about for ingredients to make mulligan. There is nothing narrow
or binding about the word mulligan. Mulligan can be made
of anything. It all depended on what we had on
(18:46):
this stove. I made some very acceptable mulligan out of
young turnip tops. They had been brought to the camp
when very small seedlings from a farmer's field where one
of our boys had been working, and transplanted in the
prison yard. I only used the outside leaves and let
them go on growing. Potatoes stolen from the guard's garden.
(19:08):
Oxocubes sent in a parcel. Oyster biscuits also sent in
a parcel, salt and pepper and water. The turnip tops
I put in the bottom of the dish, then laid
on the potatoes, covering with water and adding salt. I
then covered this with another wash basin and started my fire.
(19:31):
We were not allowed to have fires, and this gave
the mulligan all the charm of the forbidden. When it
was cooked, I added the ox ocubes and the oyster biscuit,
and mashed all together with part of the lid of
a box, and the mulligan was ready. The boys were
not critical, and I believe I could get from any
(19:52):
one of them a recommendation for a cook's position. In
the winter, we had had no trouble about a fire,
for the stoves were going, and we made our mulligan
and boiled water for tea on them. Our guards were
ordinary soldiers, sometimes those who had been wounded or were
sick and were now convalescent, and we had all sorts.
(20:16):
Usually the n c o S were the more severe.
The privates did not bother much about us. They had
troubles enough of their own. At the school garden, where
the commandant lived, I went to work one day and
made the acquaintance of his little son, a blue eyed
cherub of four or five years, who addressed me as
(20:38):
English a shrine, which was I suppose the way he
had heard his father speak of us. He did it
quite without malice, though, and no doubt thought that was
our proper name. He must have thought the shrine family
rather a large one. It was about May I think
that a letter came from my brother Flint, telling me
(21:00):
he was sending me some of the cream cheese I
was so fond of, and I knew my compass was
on the way. In about three weeks the parcel came,
and I was careful to open the cheese when alone.
The lead foil had every appearance of being undisturbed, but
in the middle of it I found the compass. After
(21:24):
that we talked over our plans for escape. Edwards and
I were the only Canadians in the camp, and we
were determined to make a break as soon as the
nights got longer. In the early summer, when the daylight
lasts so long, we knew we should have no chance,
for there were only four or five hours of darkness.
(21:45):
But in August we hoped to start for home. End
of section sixteen.
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