OCR Text |
Show I TELLS HORRORS OF AUSTRIAN CAMPS i a . course, as the starvation dief had weakened us. WTe were divided Into four sections of 250 men each and sent to different localities. My section was sent to Komen under the command of an Austrian sub-lieutenant and 30 territorials. ter-ritorials. We worked at building a railway rail-way together with 2,000 Russian prisoners. pris-oners. "Our food was worse and less than that we had in camp, as we got 4 cents a day pay and were supposed to spend it on food, although bread cost a dollar dol-lar a loaf. As we were ravenously hungry because we had to work hard we were compelled to rummage among 1 1) e garbage for food and even ate rats and mice. We also got bones, human hu-man bones they were sometimes, which we boiled to make soup. In 25 days 60 men out of the 250 In my section died from hunger, exhaustion and exposure. ex-posure. Five men committed suicide, three attempted to escape and were shot. "On January 22 my comrade, Niku Crstia, and 1 decided to escape. We walked for three days In the direction direc-tion of the Italian lines with nothing to eat, but we finally reached the ruins of a village where we found a pigsty. We took shelter here and found some potato peelings and turnips, which we ate. His Comrade Dies. "The cold was intense. We reached another village completely in ruins and we could hear the Italian guns very near. We could not find anything to eat and my comrade was more dead than alive. We slept during the day and when night came on I tried to arouse my comrade, hut he was dead. "Just then I distinctly heard the liarncteristic sound of machine gunfire gun-fire and I knew I was near the first line trendies. I decided to go on and after two hours I crossed or rather crawled through the Austrian lines. I already felt free, but I had to get over the wire entanglements and crawl over such a long stretch of ground that I thought I had made a mistake and that the Austrian trench I left behind me was merely a support position. As I hesitated what to do a voice'eame out of the darkness : 'Alt ! Chi va la?' (Halt, who goes there?) "I understood what the words meant, so I stood up and shouted : "Romun ! Romun !' And when the Italians saw me I could see the astonishment aston-ishment In (heir faces. I did not look human. They pulled me up and carried car-ried me Inside their trench. They gave me coffee, wine and bread." Roumanian, Who Escaped, Says Men Were Starved, Kicked and Chained. HUMAN BONES FOR SOUP Prisoners Often Inhumanly Punished for Eating Seeds Given Them to Sow Italian Prisoners Are Treated Worse. Rome. A Roumanian soldier, Toma Haralam, taken prisoner by the Aus-trians Aus-trians last September during the Roumanian Rou-manian Invasion of Transylvania, has just succeeded in escaping to the Italian Ital-ian lines on the Carso. The following is his story in all its simplicity and horror : "As soon as I was taken prisoner in a wood near Basso I was brought before be-fore a German officer, who examined me. I refused to answer his questions and betray my country, so he handed me over to an Austrian sergeant, who kicked me without mercy. I was left absolutely without any food, not a piece of bread or a drink of water, for three days, and then taken with many other prisoners to a concentration camp in Hungary on the River Leytha, where 20,000 prisoners of war, Russians, Italians Ital-ians and Roumanians, were confined. "We were literally starved. Our rations ra-tions consisted of five ounces of bad bread and a handful of boiled beans daily, with a small piece of meat every wtek. The men' died like flies, both from Insufficient nourishment and from coid. as the Austrlans took away our uniforms and warm underwear, as well as our boots, and gave us in exchange the castoff uniforms and torn boots of their first line troops. "We all had to work, generally in the fields, and as we ate the seed given us to sow or the raw turnips and potatoes we had to plant often we were punished pun-ished by being tied to a pole with our arms raised for hours or else chained to the ground. The Italian prisoners were treated worst of all and systematically system-atically beaten by the Austrlans. Sent to Italian Front. "Orders reached our camp In January Janu-ary that 1,000 Roumanian prisoners vvere to be sent to work on the Italian front. I was among the thousand picked men. We were all young and 8trong, comparatively speaking, of |