Cleveland County herald., 1918-12-05
other times trying to pick fight. II

| was all one to me: just wanted some thing to do l found what wanted, | all right.
 I had quite talk with a, sentry in i front of a barracks. It must have lasted three-quarters of an hour. He did not know what I was calling him, and did not know what he was call- | ing me. I 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 to give me bath. So they took me to the bathhouse, where I was stripped and dashed. All the time they were whipping me I was thinking what a joke it was on me, because I had been looking for excitement and had got more than I wanted, so I laughed and the Huns thought was crazy sure.
 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 I 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 I | sit in a draft for a second and catch cold, I wonder that I am still alive to | catch it. Having gone through Dix nude and the Dardanelles and the sinking of the Georgic and four Ger man prison camps and few other things-I shall probably trip over a neck. That would be my luck.
 There were all the diseases you can think of in this camp, including black l cholera and typhus and somebody was always dying. We had to make collins 1 from any wood we could find. So it was not long before we were using the dividing boards from our hunks, pieces | of flooring and, in fact, the walls of l the barracks. The officers were quar- tered in corrugated iron barracks, so I they had to borrow wood from us for l their collins. We would make the box and put the body in it. give it as much service as we could, in the way of prayers and hymns, and put it away in hole near the barracks. There was so much of it 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 cer was going to review the prisoners and ordered us to muster up, which we did. I was the last man out of the bar racks and on account of my wounds was slower than the rest.
 You understand had had no medical treatment except crepe-paper ban dages and water; my wounds had been opened by swimming from the Georgic 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 aneAN have seen men pick up an old dirty rag that someone else had had around l HIS WOuuu lOI d 1OL5 IllilC his own wounds with it.
 So it was all I could do to drag n.y. 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 names he could think of
 I was pretty thin at this time and getting thinner, so l figured I might just as well have it out before I starved. Besides. I thought, he ought i to know that we are not used to being bawled out by German swine in this country.
 So I 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 said: Do you remember the Deutschland? When she entered Bal timore and New London she got all the cargo she wanted, didn't she?"
 'YeS."
 "Well, 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.
 I admit I was pretty flip to this of ficer, but who would not be when a slick German swine officer bawled him out?
 It was while I was in the guardhouse that MT. Gerard, the American ambas. sador, visited the camp. He came to this camp about every six months, as rule. Even in the German prison camps the men had somehow got infor nation about Mir. Gerard's efforts tc improve the terrible surroundings ir which the men lived. Some of the meI at Dulmen had been confined in vari ous other camps and they told me that when Mir. Gerard visited these camps all that the men did for a week or SC