The Mellette County pioneer. [volume] (Wood, Mellette County, S.D.) 19??-1971, 1918-11-15

other times trying TO pick q fight. It
was all one to me / just wanted some
thing to do. / found what I wanted,
all right.
i had quite a talk with a sentry in
front Of a barracks. 1t must have
lasted th~ree-quartCrs Of an hour. He
did not know what l was calling him,
and l did not know what he was call
ing me. l could have handled him all
right, but another sentry came up on
my blind side and grabbed me and the
talk was over.
They dragged me to the commander
Of the camp and he instructed them 20
give me a bath. So they took me to
the ~bathhouse, where ! was stripped
and dashed. All the time they were
whipping me l was thinking what a
joke it was on me, because ! had been
looking for excitement and had got
more than / wanted, so ! laughed and
the Huns thought l was crazy sure.
l was dumped into a vat of hot water
and at the same time my clothes were
given a boiling, which was good for
them.
Then / was forced into my wet
clothes and marched back to the bar
racks. This bath and the stroll
through the snow in wet clothes Just
about did for me. Nowadays. when /
sit In a draft for q second and catch
cold, / wonder that l am still alive to
catch 1t. Having gone through Dix
| mY1n anH Tho m r1nnnJlaC nnI Tho
sinking of the Georgia and four Ger
man prison camps and a few other
things-I shall probably trip over a
hole in a church carpet and break my
neck. That would be my luck.
There were all the diseases you can
think Of in this camp, including black
cholera and typhus and somebody was
always dying. We had to make collins
from any wood we could find. So 1t
was not long before we were using the
dividing boards from our hunks, pieces
of flooring and, in fact, the walls of
the barracks. The officers were quar.
tered in corrugated iron barracks, so
they had to borrow wood from us for
their collins. We would make the box
and put the body in 1t, give 1t as much
service as we could, in the way Of
prayers and hymns, and put it away in
q hole heal the barracks. There was
so much of 1t that a single death
passed unnoticed.
One morning the German sentries
came to our barracks-they never
came singly-and told US that an off,
Ger was going to review the prisoners
and ordered us to muster up, which we
did. / was the last man out of the bar
racks and On account of my wounds [
was slower than the rest.
You understand I had had no medical
treatment except crepe-paper ban
dages and water my wounds had been
opened by swimming from the George
to the Moewe and they had been put
in terrible shape In the coal bunkers.
On account of the poor food and lack
Of treatment they had not even started
to heal. Incidentally, the only cloth
%bandages that any of us had were what
we would tear from our clothes and I
have seen men pick up an old dirty
rag that someone else had had around
his wound for a long time and bandage
his own wounds with it.
So 1t was all / could do to drag my
self along. The officer noticed that I
was out Of line and Immediately asked
my name and nationality. When he
heard american" he could not say
enough things about us and called me
all the swine James he could think of.
I was pretty thin at this time and
getting thinner. so I figured / might
just as well have 1t out before I
starved. Besides. ! thought, he ought
to know that we are not used to being
bawled out by German swine in this
country.
SO l told him so. And I said that he
should not bawl Americans out, be-
cause America was neutral. He then
said that as America supplied food and
munitions to the allies she was no bet
ter than the rest.
Then I said do you remember the
Deutschland? When she entered Bal
timore and New London she got all the
cargo she wanted, didn't sher
EYES,"
swell, If you send over your mer-
chant marine they will get the same"
For that answer he gave me ten days
In the guardhouse. He did not like to
be reminded that their merchant ma
rine had to dive under to keep away
from the Limeys.
admit I was pretty flip to this Of
fcer, but who would not be when a
slick German swine officer bawled him
out3
It was while / was In the guardhouse
that Mr.. Gerard, the American ambas-
sador, visited the camp. He came to
this camp about every six months, as
a rule. Even in the German prison
camps the men had somehow got infor.
nation about Mr.. Gerard's efforts to
improve the terrible surroundings in
which the men lived. Some Of the men
NJ nulmou had hoou couHuod IN vor RI