THE PRISONERS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11505, 29 September 1915, Page 1

THE PRISONERS.

! BADLY TREATED BY ENEMY. A PRIVATE'S LETTER. Further stories of German brutality are related by exchanged prisoners of war. These couiirm the persistant allegations that at tlie commencement oi" hostilities, even non-combatant lir.tishers were made the butt of cua.rs..' Prussian jokes, but that now the Hun; ar-i boL<riti.iiLi to have a sort of surly iespeet fo!- the '"scum." A private in the It.A.M.C. writes: "Just previous! to my capture (at Mons) I was helping the woi'„led in Bertry Hospital when the building tc, shelled. Then the Germans entered and took possession. The first thing they did was to pill down and trample m.-derfoot, the Red Cross flag wh oh had been Hying ovejr the building. The Union Jack they carefully kept as a memento. " Wo were all ' under guard ' thero for a fortn ght, when we were moved to the station. Some of the wounded were in -4 dangerous condition. Still, it made no diffetenco with the brutes; out the poor fellows had to go I I ''The only spark of humanity I saw camo from an Erglish-speaking German officer who, noticing one of our men who had been wounded in about twenty places and was simply a huge bandage, went to his bed and said: ' I want to shake hands with you; you are a brave fellow.' STAYED ON A MANURE HEAP. '"When 'we arrived at Brussels station tTlore was a peering, stone-throw-ing crowd. We spent one and a half days on that station on a manure be;,p. 1 forgot to mention that before leaving Bertry the Germans took away the medcal instrument cases carried by our men, many of them containing private letters and gifts from home, lockets of hair, and so forth. The cases were forced open and the contents thrown on to the line. We were searched a score of times, having to strip in the train for that purpose. "At Liege some 5000 German soldiers gave us a tine reception I But for the conduct of a guard I verily bel-eve we would Lave been stoned to death. He kept a crowd back at the point of his bayonet. i "During tho tiain journey German Red Cross women (so-called) would pass along w,th sandwiches, but they were not for us, but for the French soldiers. They mocked and laughed at we English and passed remarks that ' scum like you deserve no sandwiches.' HUNNISH BOMBAST. "At Hauspital lager, in Mun&ter, we spent a month before being taken to Rennbahr, where we were until ten days ago. At the first place, whilst en route, we had to pass through thousands of soldiers, including uhlans, who seemed to take a huge delight in strik.ng us with their lances. At the fLvst-naniedi camp a German officer oame to us one day and said: 'I will remember you all very kindly to your frientb in London. 1 shall be over in a fortnight!' It turned out that his wife was EngLsh, which apparently was the reason for his ' generosity i' ! " For three weeks there we were unable to wash—except when it rafiiedl Then we made little troughs in the ground, rigged up a. stick or two in a slanting position, covered with a sheet, end let the water form a pool. So wo washed. With my own eyes I saw great b:g men beaten for fancied offences—walking a little slowly here, or not speaking quickly ""enough | there 1 I hare seen men with the bullets still in their legs, hobbling about —crawling, one might more truly sayrather than face certain death at the hands of the German medical man 1 PRUSSIAN GUARDS WENT PURPLE. "What news did we get? Well, a paper, published from Berlin, was circulated through our camp, but as it was obviouslj all 'lake news.,' no one would read it. We used, though, to i know when there had been a victory fo'- the Aliies by the manner of our guards). They would go purple in the face, spit at us more vehemently than ever." 1 I j