Connecticut western news., 1918-10-17

Then they drilled us past the Ger man soldiers quarters. The men were at rifle practice, and guess all of us thought how handy we would be as targets. But when we got near them, they quit practicing and crowded around us yelling: "'Raus! Zuruck l"
 Finally we got to the top of the hill, and were halted near the bar racks while an officer read the mar tial law of Germany to us. At least we thought maybe that was 1t.
 Finally they let us into the bar racks, and the first thing we saw was a great pile of hay. That looked good to us, and we made a rush and dived into 1t. But the Huns told us to take the hay and throw 1t In the middle of the road. They had to use force be- fore we would do 1t. Finally we gave in, however, and started to carry 1t out. Some of the young boys were crying, and I do not blame them much.
 But one of the boys tried to hide some of the hay behind box and was caught doing 1t, and two sentries clouted him from one end of the bar racks to the other. His nose was broken and his face mashed to jelly. But there was nothing we could do, so we just wandered up and down the barracks, about as we did between decks on the Moewe, trying to keep warm. t
 While this marathon was on we heard whistle blown very loudly, and when we looked out we saw a wagon piled up with old tin cans. Then we were told to form single file, walk out to the wagon and each get a can for himself. Each man had to take the first can he laid his hands on, and many of us got rusty ones with holes in them. So that about half an hour later, when we received barley coffee, and all we had to drink it from was the cans, lots of the men had to drink theirs almost in one gulp or lose half of it.
 The barracks were very dirty and smelled horribly, and the men were still not even half clothed. We all looked filthy and smelled that way,
  off, we were very pale. And all of us were starved looking.
 About eleven o'clock that morning the whistle blew again, and we came out and were given an aluminium spoon and dish apiece. Then we cheered up and saw corned beef and cabbage for ourselves. An hour later they drilled us through the snow to the kuche. When we got there we stood in line until at least half-past twelve, and then the Germans shout ed: "Nichts zu essen" But we did hung around there and waited. Then they started shouting, "Zuruckl Zu- ruck" and drove us back to the bar racks. .r~.--. -.-. ..-
 Later we heard the words "nichts zu essenw so often that we thought l probably they meant mo eats" We had our reasons for thinking so, too. l Those words, and "zuruck" and "'raus," were practically all we did hear, except, of course, various kinds ! of schweinhunde.
 It was awful to see the men when we got back to the barracks. Some Of the boys from the Georgic, not much over twelve years old, were almost l crazy, but even the older men were crying, many of them. It was nothing but torture all the time. They opened all the windows and doors in the bar racks, and then we could not heat the vUit cyfo o-A ed to move around, to keep warm, they fired 2 few shots at us. I do not | know whether they hit anyone or not ; we had got so that we did not pay any attention to things like that. But 1t stopped us, and we had to stand still. The Huns thought we would take the rifles from the sentries and use them, too.
 I never saw yellower bunch of people in my life. do not mean peo- pie. I wish I could publish what I really mean.
 We had stoves in the barracks, but no coal or wood to burn. There were many boxes piled up there, but they belonged to the Germans. We would have burned them if we could, but the Germans made us carry them across the road. They weighed about 15O pounds apiece, and we were so weak that 1t was all two men could do to budge them. And we had to carry them; they would not let us roll them. We were so cold and hungry that even that exercise did not warm us.
 About 2:30 the whistle blew again, and the Huns picked out few men and took them down the road. We could not figure out why, but they came back about three o'clock, all of them with bread in their arms. They were chewing away on it when they had a chance. Whenever the sentries were not looking they would bite at 1t like fish going after a worm. Each