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Updated: June 5, 2025
Although the distance from Wesel to Paderborn Sennelager is three miles outside the latter town is only about 95 miles as the crow flies, the railway takes a somewhat circuitous route.
It was a characteristic tirade delivered in the conventional Teuton gramophone manner. But it affected us materially. Now we were to become slaves in very truth! The Commandant informed us point-blank that he was extremely dissatisfied with our manner of working. We were too slow: we nursed our tasks. Did we think we were being kept at Sennelager for the benefit of our health or to make holiday?
But he seldom, if ever, comes back to Sennelager! During my period of incarceration only one man, B , who was sent to Paderborn hospital to die as the Germans thought, but who recovered, returned to Sennelager. When a man was hastened out of the camp in this manner we never knew his fate. It became a by-word that few men went from Sennelager but none returned.
Many of us feared that he would be condemned for four hours to the tying post, so infuriated was the despot of the camp, but he escaped this terrible ordeal. About four weeks after we had entered Sennelager permission was extended to those who felt so disposed to enjoy the luxury of an open-air bath.
We resolutely stayed indoors until the gaping crowds had gone. This diversion of the German public, if such it may be called, speedily fell into desuetude, not because the novelty wore off, but because the "Engländer" were never to be seen, so that the six-mile tramp from Paderborn to Sennelager and back was merely wasted.
It was a comprehensive indictment of the German treatment of the British prisoners, relative more particularly to Sennelager, which the authorities were firmly determined should never become known to the world at large, and to conceal which they used unceasing efforts. Had that diary got home it would have created a tremendous sensation.
In order to give me something to occupy my mind he attached me to a few other invalids, who were also on "pass," to light work in cleaning out the hospitals for the recruits who were evidently coming to Sennelager within the near future.
Some say that the priests were distributed among other camps; others that one or two succumbed to the persistent ill-treatment meted out to them; and still more that they are yet at Sennelager. No one can say precisely. Only one fact remains.
Early in September I did succeed in getting two post-cards away, but I ascertained afterwards that they did not reach their destinations until some weeks after I had left Sennelager. We felt this isolation very keenly because one and all were wondering vaguely what our wives, families, friends, or relatives were doing. About ten days after our arrival at this hostelry there was a parade.
Up to the day of my release from Ruhleben on December 6, 1915, but one of those old salts had been released, and had been returned to his country. We were informed at Sennelager that the authorities were determined, at all hazards, to keep these "diabolical fiends" as they were termed, in durance vile, until the termination of the war.
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