The Pulaskian., 1918-10-04
CHAPTER V.-continued.

One man-and 1 think he was tn,
 smallest eater in the camp-won it oI
 three successive days, but it was wei
 for him that his luck deserted him or
 the fourth day, for he probably would
 have been handled rather roughly by
 the rest of the crowd, whe were grow
 ing suspicious. But we handled tn,
 drawing ourselves and knew there wa.
 nothing crooked about it, so he wa:
 spared.
 We were allowed to buy pears, anC
 being small and very hard, they were
 used as the stakes in many a game
 But the interest in these little games
 was as keen as if the stakes had beer
 piles of money instead of two or three
 half-starved pears. No man was ever so reckless, however, in all the betting as to wager his own rations.
 By the most scheming and sacrific- ing ever did in my life 1 managed to hoard two pieces of bread (grudgingly spared at the time from my daily ra- tions), but 1 was preparing for the day when l should escape-if l ever should. It was not a sacrifice easily made either. but instead of eating bread I ate pears until l finally got one piece of bread ahead; and when I could force myself to stick to the pear diet again, l saved the other piece from that days allowance, and in days to come had cause to credit myself fully for the foresight.
 Whenever a new prisoner came in and his German hosts had satisfied themselves as to his life history and taken down all the details-that is all he would give them-he was immedi- ately surrounded by his fellow prison CTS, who were eager for any bit of news or information he could possibly give them, and as a rule he was glad to tell us, because, if he had been in the hands of the Huns for any length of time, he had seen very few English officers.
 The conditions of this prison were bad enough when a man was in nor mally good health, but it was barbar- ous to subject a wounded soldier to the hardships and discomforts of the place. However, this was the fate of poor private we discovered there one day in terrific pain, suffering from snrapnel in his stomach and back. All or us officers asked to have him sent to hospital, but the doctors curtly reIused, saying it was against orders. 50 the poor creature went on suffering rom day to day and was still there When l left-another victim of Ger man cruelty.
 At one time in this prison camp there were French marine, a French flying oincer, two Belgian soldiers, and of the united Kingdom one from Canada, two rom England, three from Ireland, a couple from Scotland, one from Wales, man from South Africa, one from Algeria, and a New Zealander, the iatter being from my own squadron, man whom 1 thought had been killed, ana he was equally surprised when brought into the prison to find me 'hefe In addition there were a Chi Mnan and myself from the U. s. A.
 II was quite a cosmopolitan group, ana as one typical Irishman said, sure, and we have every nation that's Morth mentioning, including the darn uermans with us whites. Of course liiS was not translated to the Ger mans, nor was it even spoken in their nearing, or we probably would not ,aVe "a had quite so cosmopolitan bunch. a1ach man in the prison was ready to uphold his native country in any argu- suent that could possibly be started, anu II goes without saying that never sOoA q back seat in any of them with .ay s. praise for America, with the Cana uian and Chinaman eniming in on my 9'ue' But they We're friendly argu- Alents we were all in the same boat anu that was no place for quarreling. <, avery other morning, the weather anoWihg, we were taken to large ss"inllning pool and were allowed to nave bath. There were two pools, sne Tor the German officers and one ,ol the men. Although we were off seis, \. We had to use the pool occupied " the men. While we were in swim e German guard with a rifle ls1oss th his knees sat at each corner of -. 'ae pool and watched us closely as \. re ufessed and undressed. English +s ss'eipreters accompanied us on all of +a,, +avse trips, so at no time could we soing cn.
 ,., "nenever we were taken out of the ,,son ,.~ Tor any purpose they always 't ss'aued us through the, most crowded
 evidently tc give the popu O r4 = x&t