The Dermott news., 1919-01-23

 was all one to me- l just wanted some thing to do. l found what l wanted. all right
 I had quite a talk with sentry in front of barracks It must have lasted three-QuartCrs of an hour. He did not know what l was calling him. and I 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 to give me a bath. So they took me to the bathhouse. where I was stripped and lashed. All the time they were whipping me I was thinking what joke if was on me, because l had been looking for excitement and had got more than I wanted. so l laughed and the Huns thought l was crazy sure
 was dumped Into a vat of hot water and at the same time my clothes were given q 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 mo Nowadays, when I sit in a draft for q second and catch cold. I wonder that I am still alive to catch it. Having gone through Dix nude and the Dardaneles and the sinking of the Georgic and four Ger man prison camps and few other things-I shall probably trip over hole in q 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 cofiins 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 10 borrow wood from US for their collins. We would make the box and put the body in 1t, 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 1t that single death passed unnotlced.
 One morning the German sentries came to our barracks-they never came singly-and told us that an off eer was going to review the prisoners and ordered us to muster up. which We did. l 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 daEeS and water; my wounds had been opened by swimming from the Georsic to the Moewe and they had been put 1 fin terrible shape In the coal hunkerS 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 i We would tear from our clothes and l have seen men pick up an old dirty rag that someone else had had around his wound for a long time and baudagc his own wounds with 1t.
 | So it was all could do to drag my self along. The officer noticed that 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 was pretty thin at this time and l getting thinner. so l figured l might i just as well have if out before i starved. Besides. l thought, he ought 1 to know that We are not used to being bawlcd out by German swine in this country.
 So told him so. And said that he l 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 tlmore 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 :" i For that answer he gave me ten days i in the guardhouSe. He did not like 10 i he reminded that their merchant ma rne had To dive under 10 keep away from the LimcyS.
 admit l was pretty flip to this of l heer. but who would not be when l slick German swine officer bawled him out7
 IL was while was in the guardhouse l that Mir. Gerard. the American ambas- .udor. 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 to | improve the terrible surroundings in which the men lived. Some of the men at Dulmen had been confined in vari- ous other camps and they told me that when Mir. Gerard visited these camps