Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1919-01-07
TELLS OF HARDSH|PS
IN HUN PRISON CAMPS
aid Of Red Cross Prevented
Wholesale Deaths" Says Re-
turning Soldier
MANY WENT INSANE

have survived.
In those words Bruce E. Cameron, a
young Canadian who has just returned
to his home in New York, summarized
his nightmare memories of the three
years and nine months of existence he
had endured in the German prison
camp on the race track enclosure at
Ruhleben. near Berlin. He was a stu
dent of music in Dresden, Saxony,
when the war broke out. In Novem-
Der, 1914. while engaged in an argu-
ment in public place, he resented
with some heat the charge that the
British were using dumdum bullets.
A few days later, on November s, he
was arrested on a charge of having in
suited the country. uttering seditious
words.
sIncarcerated at first in the govern
Ament penitentiary at Bautzen, where
his associates were highwaymen and
murderers, he was transferred later to
1 the prison encampment at Ruhlben.
/ This was exclusively a civilian prison
camp There were about five thousand
prisoners there, of whom fifteen hum
dred were seamen interned from Brit
ish merchant ships that were in Ger
man ports when the war began
Stalls As Cells.
The stalls of the race track pad
docks were used as cells, eight or ten
men at first being crowded into each
stall, which still reeked with the odors
of stable litter. The number lin each
stall later was reduced to six men, and
after the camp became better organic
ed eight or ten frame barracks were
built to extend the accommodations.
Hundreds of prisoners also slept I'M
der armed guard in the grahdstands
and open field seats. In each of the
barracks there were housed six men.
The Germans supplied to every pris-
oner one blanket, one bit of bagging
filled with damp straw as shake
down on which to sleep, one bowl,
which might be used either for wash
ing purposes or as a receptacle for
the nondescript soup" coffee or cocoa
served occasionally. and one thin,
cheap towel, which, like the blankets,
was expected to last indefinitely. Those
men who enjoyed the use Of better
toilet facilities had to procure them
by bribing the guards or otherwise
through their own resources
THE food said Mr.. Cameron, was
simply rotten; no other word would
do it justice. Once a day there was,
at first, an issue of a loaf apiece of
soggy black bread much inferior to
the war bread served to the soldiers.
Often it contained particles of straw
and sand, which caused many of the
prisoners to become i'll with stomach
and intestinal disorders. AS food be-
came more scarce in Germany a two
pound loaf of this heavy black bread
had to last five men for one day, and
nothing else was served for the morn
ing repast. What they called tea or
coffee or cocoa was horrible stuff,
lacking wholly the tast of those bev-
erages. / don't know what they were
made from.
Al Soup Alike.
''At the midday meal they sometimes
gave us cabbage soup, or what was
called soup of some other kind. 1t was
all equally thin and tasteless. The
only recognizable ingredient re-
member to have identified regularly
was caroway seed. On some days
boiled potatoes were issued instead of
soup. During the later years it was
forbidden to serve potatoes except in
their skins. Inside the skins we usual
ly found the tubers rotted or spoiled
by frost or decomposition. In America
or Canada we would not have fed
them to pigs. The only mea. doled
out was an occasional bite of the
cheapest kind of black German saus-
age about as big as your index finger.
Three or four times a week we had a
mixture Of rice and prunes until we
all grew sick of this diet
after the first eight months of my
prison life arrangements became eff
fective whereby we each received four
parcels of food monthly from England,
and, through the Red Cross bakeries
set up in Denmark, bread reached us
when it was not more than five days
Olu. 0O ldI dS the were Gull
cerned. even when they had plenty,
they never gave us enough. Such a
thing as a piece of soap was unknown.
Through the coolest days and nights of
winter the heating arrangements of
the barracks were pitifully inadequate
and we shivered under our ragged
blankets. More than a hundred men
whom / knew have died and hundred
others went insane. while half dozen
took their own lives. l know of thirty
other Englishmen who have died within
three weeks after their release and
return to England as result of their
maltreatment"
/ Some Distinguished Prisoners
Mr.. Cameron named as some of his
fellow prisoners nephew of Arthur
]. Balfour, British Minister of State;
the youngest son of Lord Davenport,
Sir Timothy Eden, and Jack Cameron,
Fred Pentland, all well known men in