Cleveland County herald., 1918-12-26
CHAPTER xXll-Continued.

regular prison barracks four hundred Russians and Belgians were buried. Most of them had died from cholera, typhoid and inoculations. We heard from the prisoners there before us that the Germans had come through the camps with word that there was an epidemic of black typhus and cholera and that the only thing for the men to do was to take the serum treatment to avoid catching these diseases. Most of the four hundred men had died from the inoculations. They had taken the Germans word, had been inoculated and had died within nine hours. Which shows how foolish it is to believe German. None of us had any doubt but what the serum was poisonous.
 The second day that we were in the regular camp the Germans strung barbed wire all around our barracks. They told us we had a case of black typhus among us. This was nothing more nor less than bluff, for not one of us had typhus, but they put up the wire, nevertheless, and we were not allowed to go out.
 One day when I was loafng around our barracks door and not having any thing particularly important to do, l packed nice hard snowball and land- ed it neatly behind the ear of little sentry not far away. When he looked around he did not blow his whistle but began hunting for the thrower. This was strange in a German sentry and thought he must be pretty good stuff. When he looked around, however, all he saw was man staggering around as if he were drunk. The man was the one who had done the throwing, all right, but the sentry could not be sure of it, for surely no man would stay out in the open and invite accidents like that. But still, who had done it?
 So I just kept staggering around, and the sentry came up to me and looked me over pretty hard. Then l thought for the first time that things might go hard on me, but I figured that if I quit the play acting it would be all over. So I staggered right up to the sentry and looked at him drunk enly, expecting every moment to get one from the bayonet.
 But he was so surprised that all he could do was stare. So 1 stared back, pretending that l saw two of him, and otherwise acting foolish. Then l guess he realized for the first time that the chances of anybody being drunk ill that camp were small--at least for the prisoners. He was rubbing his ear all the time, but finally the thought seeped through the ivory and he began to laugh. I laughed, too, and the first thing you know he had me doing it again-that is, the imitation. One snOwball was enough, I figured.
 I used to talk to him quite often after that. We had no particular love for each other, but he was gamer than the other sentries, and he did not call me schweinhund every time he saw me, so we got on very well together. His name must have been Schwartz, I guess, but it sounded like "Swatts" to me, so Swatts he was, and I was "Chink" to him, as everybody else called me that.
 One day he asked me if I could speak French, and I said yes. Italian j; yes. Russian; yes. No matter what language he might have mentioned I would have said yes, because 1 could smell something in the wind, and I was curious. Then he told me that if l went to the hospital and worked fhnrp mi icrh 0l~ would not have to go so far for them, and that my knowing all the languages I said I did would help me a great ways toward getting the job.
 Evidently he had been told to get a man for the place, because he ap- pointed me to it then and there He put me to work right away. We went over to one of the barracks, where a case of sickness had been reported, and found that the invalid was big Barbadoes negro named Jim, fire man from the Voltaire. At one time Jim must have weighed 25O- pounds but by this time he was about two pounds lighter than a straw hat, but still black and full of pep. Light as he was, was no "white hope," and it was all could do to carry him to the hospital. Swatts kept right along be- hind me. and every time I would stop to rest, he would poke me with a broom-the only broom I saw in Ger many-and laugh and point to his ear.
 Then l thought it was a frame-up and that he was getting even with me, but I was in for it then, and the best l could do was to go through with it. But l was all in when we reached the hospital. The first thing I saw when we got in the door was another negro, also from Barbadoes, and as tall and thin as Jim had once been short and fat. This black boy and I made great team, but I never knew what his name was. l always called him Kate. because night and day he was whistling the old song, "Kate, Kate, Meet Me at the Garden Gate," or.words to that effect. have walked up many a night and heard that whistle just about at the same place as when had fallen asleep. It would not have been L. L, Ix<~ L.