IN THE HANDS OF THE HUN

Evening Star, Issue 17032, 1 May 1919, Page 3

IN THE HANDS OF THE HUN

NEW ZEALAND SOLDIER'S STORY. After being eight months a prisoner 3n the hands ot" the Germans. Private A. E. Morris, of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (a Wellington boy), was released on the signing of the armistice in November hist, and he has now returned to his home. He tells a grim story of brutal ill-treatment at the hands of the Germans who forced him and many other prisoners to work under shocking" conditions close behind the German lines and under the fire of the British guns. Private Morris . was captured on April 16, 1918, with other members of 'the New Zealand En- | trenching Battalion. His unit had been i hurried to the front at a time when the British armies were falling hack before the great German offensive, and it was surrounded and cut off by the advancing enemy. Private Morris was kept working behind the lines on -an ammunition dump, unloading ammunition trains and loading lorries for the tiring line, and, with others. was frequently worked all day without food. Part of the time 'the men were kept during the night in a shed with a concrete floor without bedding. The men became physical wrecks, and one committed suicide with a German bomb. Later Private Morris and others were kept in the "black hole" of Lille. They were there six weeks—sso men in a room 60ft by 20ft—again without bedding. When the allied advance began the men were marched back from point to point. There were signs that the spirit of the Germans i was being broken, but the situation of the prisoners was relieved only by Belgians, whose kindness and generosity never failed. When news of the armistice arrived the prisoners were told they would be sent home. But they didn't wait for German permission; they left their prison quarters that night, and, with the assistance of sympathisers, made their way to Brussels.