United States or Liberia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There were here at Vehnmoor, as there had been at Giessen, a certain few of our own men who traded on the misfortunes of their own comrades. This man was the worst of them all. He was a sergeant-major in a certain famous regiment of the line in the British Army.
To our great joy, in the hollow heart of it there was tucked away the tiny compass Simmons had written for from Vehnmoor just before our second escape. With it were four American quarters. Not anticipating this good luck, we had exercised our ingenuity to construct a rude compass of our own out of a safety-razor blade and an eyelet from my boot.
It was not so wet as the swamp at Vehnmoor, but the drinking water was even worse than the brackish, peat-laden water there. The general sanitary arrangements were terrible and the food was worse than at Giessen, the camp in which that lack had been the worst feature among many bad ones. And on top of it all the treatment was very bad, much worse than any we had previously known.
Soap or any other fatty substance was by that time very scarce in Germany, amongst the lower classes at least. I was the only "non-com" in our lot, and so put up the stripes I had taken down to avoid giving Augen Rechts at Vehnmoor. I used that authority now to persuade my fellow Britishers to give to the unfortunate Russians rather than to the French, who, like ourselves, were receiving parcels.
As such they were denied such desperadoes as ourselves. We remained there for two weeks and were then sent to the punishment camp known as Vehnmoor or Cellelaager 6. This was a good day's ride away and also in Hanover, fifteen kilometres from the big military town of Oldenburg.
In the afternoon they took us by rail to Meppen and shoved us in the civilian jail, where we were allowed a daily ration of two ounces of black bread, one pint of gruel and three-quarters of a pint of coffee for two days, until, on January thirtieth, an escort came from Vehnmoor.
Word Of The Day