IN GERMAN HANDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16300, 5 August 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

IN GERMAN HANDS.

ENGLISH SOLDIER'S ORDEAL.

FOUR DAYS AMONG THE DEAD.

Shot through the body above the thighs, with both legs seemingly paralysed and useless, four days and nights on the battlefield before being discovered by the enemy, subjected to insults by his captors, neglected in hospital, and half-starved. These were some of the trials experienced by Private David Peers, of the Lincolnshire Regiment, after the gallant charge which took the Hohenzollern Redoubt from the Germans. An "exchange" prisoner from Germany, he is now in an English hospital, hoping to regain his power to walk.

IS'ever is he likely to forget what the word " German" means, for he says that had they shown him any attention at all his injury would not have threatened to make him a cripple for life. Only one man showed him kindness, and he was a German-American doctor, who had been prevented from going back to America. Under his care he would have been well in three weeks, but the doctor was not permitted to operate on him. Terrible Exposure. With the Lincolns he marched from Ypres to help in the attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt. He entered the front line ternches, and en October 13, when the famous charge was made, he and others went over the parapet with their machine gun and got well in advance. By 2.50, after the gun had done great execution, his comrades were all down, and he himself received a shot through his body. It took all power and feeling from his legs.

First-aid men -would have got a stretcher to carry him to the rear, but that part of the line had to retire, and he was left alone between the English and German lines. So he remained for four days and nights, suffering intensely from pain and exposure. Sometimes he dragged himself along the ground to seek company. But only dead men were around him. But from their water bottles he quenched his raging thirst! Food he never thought of. No Medical Treatment. Having lost all sense of direction ha could not crawl far. On the fourth day he heard voices, and feigned death, for he recognised the enemy tongue. Una German officer turned him over and spat on him, with the expression, " Ach, English swine!"

Peers says the young German-American doctor was a " toll." He got the poor Englishman to the rear and looked after his wound. It seems that the doctor was on holiday in Germany when war broke out. He was not allowed to return to America, and was made to accompany the German army and use his skill on the wounded. Peers was sent to a hospital in Cologne, and, except that a doctor called every morning, there was no medical treatment.

" There were no nurses and no one to help us,'' says Peers. "We had to attend on one another as best} wa could. A Russian prisoner helped me a lot, and, as I was iielpless, I needed plenty of help. And the food! Well, we were halfstarved. But for food parcels from home we should have been in bad straits." Peers' did not know that he had been posted as killed" in the action. Nor did he know that his mother had been so notified.