PRISONER IN GERMANY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16545, 19 November 1915, Page 8

PRISONER IN GERMANY

NEW ZEALANDER'S APPEAL FOR FOOD. An Aucklander has received from Private Ben Good, an Auckland man who enlisted in fcho_ Scots Guards in England at the beginning of the war, a letter written from a Uerman prison camp, showing that the British prisoners' chief trouble is serious lack of good food. The writer was taken prisoner during the Neuve Chapelle action. He states: " Twice a month I am allowed to write a letter. No doubt you have often wondered why I not written before, but I did not think tho war would last so long, and I have been in communication with all the people I know in England to send me out a parcel of eatables, etc. lam now of a different opinion as regards tho war, and as all war news is strictly forbidden in all letters, net that suffice, and when writing don't say anything about Hie war. as all letters are censored. In regard to myself, I am Al, and this place," Mersoberg, in Saxony, is whore I am imprisoned. Wo are working out in the open, and it gives you a terrible appetite. Can ' you and Dad. with .any other help you can get, send me a parcel or a box of tinned eatables every now and again? Anything you can oat, that is, in tins, will 'be acceptable, and being in tins will stand the long voyage. Anything like the following will do: Tea, coffee, cocoa, milk, sugar, jam. dripping, tinned bread, biscuits, fish, corned beef, or any other tinned meat, sweets. sardmos, in fact, anything in tins. Send as often as yo«=»can, and if any of your .chums will help you, I will bo very much obliged. "All my pals in the regiment are gone —killed, I mean, with one exception, Kennedy, who is with mo hero, there being only 39 left out. of'my battalion.—Yours ever, Pte Ben Good. No. 7 Co.. fcriegs,. gefangenlager. Mereeberg, Germany, care G.P.0.. Mount Pleasant, London. Fngland. P.S.—Don't waste any time, as it takes an awful long time to come all this way." One-third of the sufferers from gout in hospitals are painters.