IN THE BLACK HOLE OF LILLE.

Lake County Press, Issue 2791, 26 June 1919, Page 5

IN THE BLACK HOLE OF LILLE.

New Zeal a rider's Story of Prussian Chamber of Horrors.

Private 8. L. Peacock, brother of Mr S. Peacock, Arrowtown, visited his friends here last week. Private Peacock was a prisoner with the Germans, and spent six weeks in what is termed " Tbe Black Hole of Lille." In an interview with a representative of the Wellington Free Lance, Private Peacock gave the following graphic description of the privations suffered by himself and the otber prisoners there. The Free Lance say that " lest any of our readers may think that tbe description is overdrawn, we havo tbe assurance of Private Peacock that it conveys but a faint idea of the misery and torture of tbe reality." " I was there for six weeks," says Private Peacock, "and I know all about it. There were 800 New Zealand boys stuck there in midsummer, in a room 60ft long by 20ft wide, with an average of only one meal a day, and no water for the whole of that six weeks. All we had to drink was some beastly liquid called substitute made out of some kind of tree —you could see the leaves in the coffee It was sour and there was no nourishment in it. Then we had sauerkraut and black bread. No' nourishment in that either. If you filled yourself up with the tack—but you never got tbat chance—you would have been dead hungry in about an hour's time. We were always hungry and dirty. Sometimes the fellows would wash themselves with their coffee. Oh, we bad a time I can tell you." Private Peacock went on to tell about the sufferings of the men and the unspeakable conditions under which they dragged out these six long, weary weeks. The sanitary arrangements were appalling Dysentery was rampart, and the boys grew weaker every day. They got so weak that they lay all day on the evilsmelling floor, and when they got up for their daily exercise of twenty minutes' spell in the fresh air outside they were often too faint and giddy to stand up. " That was the German guards' way of treating British prisoners," said Private Peacock, who went on to relate tbat after enduring a period of Hell-upon-earth in the Black Hole of Lille, they were drafted to another camp, where the Bavarians had charge, and here they had rather a better time. " But take them all through," he said " they're a bad lot. They made us graft behind the lineß under the fire of our own guns. We asked to be moved back, and they told us they would if it got any hotter, but that was the last we heard of it. On the day of tbe Armistice they told us we would have to shift their transport into Germany. This was at a place called Stockel, about eight miles out of Brussels, wbers we had been shifted after we loft Lille. So that night we scaled the wall, about 200 of us, and got away. The Belgians were very good to us aad gave us civvy clothes and decent tucker, I was 11 stone when I was captured at Meteren after the. big German burst through in March, 1918, and dropped two stone after that, but I've picked it up again," he added. Private Peacock went away with the 19th Reinforcements and went through the Messines and Passchendaele stunt?, coming through with nothing worse than a knock on the wrist from the butt of a rifle, the mark of which is still showing. Later at Polygon Wood he was gassed and sent into hospital. After being reported fit for duty he was despatched to the

base in France and was waiting to join up when the German offensive began, and he and other New ZeaJanders were hurried up to the line at Meteren to hold on " The Tommies on cither flank broke during the night," he said, " and we had the Germans all round us. We were captured at six o'clook in the morning, and were marched and worked till 3 next morning without a thing to eat. Then we were allowed to have a sleep. Up again at G and graft till 7 at night, and then—our first bit of food —black bread. We were nearly mad with hunger." Then they were sent into tha Black Hole of Lille, as related above. There is one good thing, the war Crimes Commission has got all the facts about the Black Hole, and certain Prussian brutes are due to get it in the nock sooner or later.