Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1919-01-24

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 / was stripped
and dashed. All the time they were
whipping me I was thinking what a
joke it was on me, because had been
| looking for excitement and had got
more than I wanted, so I laughed and
the Huns thought I was crazy sure.
| was dumped into vat of hot water
and at the same time my clothes were
given boiling, which was good for
them.
Then / 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
sit in draft for a<second and catch
cold, wonder that am still alive to
catch it. Having. gone through Dix
nude and the Dardane1les and the
sinking of the Georgia and four Ger
man prison camps and few other
thingsI shall probably trip over a
hole in a church carpet and break my
neck. That would be my luck.
1 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 collins
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
the barracks. The officers were quar-
tered in corrugated iron barracks, so
they had to borrow wood from us for
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
a 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
Ger was going to review the prisoners
and ordered us to muster up, which we
did. 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 Georgia
| 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 we're what
we would tear from our clothes and
4 have seen men pick up an old dirty
1 rag that someone else had had around
/ his wound for a long time and bandage
his own wounds with it.
So it was all could do to drag my
self along. The officer noticed that
was out of line and Immediately asked
1 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
/ getting thinner, SO / figured / might
just as we'll have it out before l
starved. Besides. / thought, he ought
to know that we are not used to being
bawled out by German swine in this
country.
i So told him so. And / 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?''
eyes"
'Well, If you send over your mer-
chant marine they will get the same.'
For that answer he gave me ten days
i in the guardhouse. He did not like to
/ be reminded that their merchant ma
ripe had to dive under to keep away
from the Limeys.
admit was pretty flip to this Of
ficer, but who would not be when a
4 slick German swine officer bawled him
out?
It was while was in the guardhouse
that Mr.. Gerard, the American ambas-
sador, visited the camp. He came to
this camp about every six months, as
a rule. Even in the German prison
camps the men had somehow got infor-
nation about Mr.. Gerard's efforts to
improve the terrible surroundings in
which the men lived. Some of the men
/ at Dulmen had been confined in vari-
GUS other camps and they told me that
when Mr.. Gerard visited these camps
all that the men did for a week or so
afterward was to talk about his visit
and what he had said to them. We
knew Mr. Gerard had got the Germans
to make conditions better in some of
the worst hell-holes in Germany and
the men were always glad when he
came around. They felt they had some
thing better to look forward to and
some relief from the awful misery.
Mr.. Gerard was passing through the
French barracks and a man knew
there told him there was an American
there. The Germans did not want him
to see me, but he put up an argument
with the commanding officer and they
/ finally said he could interview me. 1
never was so glad to see anyone as
/ was to see him. The picture is still
with me of him coming in the door.
We talked for about an hour and a
half, guess, and then he got up to