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Show Gunner Bepew - , ; ly l , rx-Cunncrind Chief Petty Ofllcer, U.S. Nvy Member of the lorrliln I-etflon of Trance iV 1 nOTi" TVT B3"r3"V?i T CptliiCinTurret.rrrncliIlattIe:hlpCj9nrd Corrrtcht, 1019, bf Rcllly Kritton CVx, Through Hixv-UI Arrane-mriit With tlio flrorun MiUllicw Adni HrrTloe It nrriiicil to got collier und colder, Tt did not ndnd II ho in 1 1-1 1 . At nliout eleven that morning, we arrived u t a place called Minilon nnd saw u (irlson it 1 1 1 there Just a blockade r.'.-nr tilt tracks wllli tin; Ihi.vh out In Ihe open. Wo waved In tlieni, and lliey waved linelt and cave a cheer oh or two. Wo felt sorry for them, because wo knew wo wero not going to Unit caiip. nnd . from what llllle wo biiw, wu knew wo could not ho going to a worse pluco than they were In. I shall never for-eel for-eel Pillnden, because It waH here that I received Hie only cigarette I hail whllo 1 was In Germany. Mlndon Is qi 1 1 1 o n railway center, I fciic.ss, and when wo iiulled Into tho ileiol, wo saw many troops going to the front or cnnilni; liael;. Ah at nil lmporlant (.'ermaii railway stations, there was. a Ited Cross hoolli on tho platform, Willi Gorman f I r 1 h handing out hurley coffee and oilier things to the (ionium soldiers. I saw a largo shanty on tho platform, with u Hod Cross ialnled over tho door. I saw the i;lrls giving hurley cofTeo to tho soldiers, anil I thought I would liuve a try at It and at least ho polite enough to give tho girls a chance of refusing mo. I was refused all right, hut they were so nasty about It that I put down my head and let something slip. I do not remember just what It was, but It was not very complimentary, compliment-ary, I guess. Anyhow, I did not think anyone Hour thero understood Eng-llsli, Eng-llsli, but evidently Homo one heard e had a stovo 111 the cenler, a good stove and n big one, but lit ilr.st It was of no use to lis, because the (iennans would not give us coal or wood for II. Hut after shivering for u while, we begun be-gun ripping the boards out of the barracks, bar-racks, and taking the dividing bowrds from tho benches that we used for beds. Later, they gave each of us n mattress mat-tress tilled wllli wood shavings, and a blanket that was about as warm as a pane of glass. The mattresses wero placed on the ground In the barracks, which were very dump, nod after threo or four days, the shavings would begin be-gin to rot and the mattresses to smell. In order to keep warm we slept as close together as we could, which t'aused our various diseases to spread rapidly. When we were receiving our rations, the sentries would offer us an extra ration If we would take n lash from their belts. We were so' hungry that many and many n man would go up nnd take n swat In any part of his body from the heavy leather belts with brass tongue and buckle, Just to get a little more "shadow" soup or barley coffee or mud bread. One morning the sentries picked out ten men from our barracks, of which I was one, and drilled us over n field near the kuehe. There was a largo tank In the field and we had to pump water into it. It was very cold, and j we were weak nnd sick, so wo would fall ono nfter 'mother, not caring whether we ever gut up or not. Fritz would smash those who fell with his rille butt. We nsked for gloves, because be-cause our hands were freezing, but all we got was "Nlchts." After we had been there for nbout nn hour nnd a half, one of our men became very sick, so that I thought i he was going to die, nnd when he fell over, I reported It to a sentry. Tho ; sentry came over, s:iv him lying In I the snow, yelled, "Schweln, nicht krank !" grabbed him by the shoulder, nnd rulled him all the way across the field to the office of the camp com- j mnnder. Then he wns placed In tho j guard house, where lie remained for two days. The next thing we knew, the Russians had been ordered to make a box, nnd were being marched to the guard house to put him in it and bury him. Another thing at Neustrelitz, that wns pretty hard to stand, was the rret-ty rret-ty habit the Ilur.s had of coming up to the barbed wire nnd tensing us as though we were wild animals in a cage. Sometimes there would be crowds of people lined along the wire throwing things at us, and spitting, and having a great time generally. It was harder than ever when a family party would arrive, with vater and mutter, nnd maybe grosvater nnd ! grosmutter, and nil the little Roche j kinder, because, as you probably know, the Germans take food wiih them whenever they go on a party, no matter what kind, nnd they would stand there nnd stare at us like the boobs they were, eating all the timo and we so hungry that we could have eaten ourselves, almost. After 1 they had stared a while, they would begin to feel more at home, and then would start the throwing nnd spitting nnd the "schweinhund" sangerfest, nnd they would have a great time generally. general-ly. Probably, when they got home, they would strike off a medal for themselves in honor of the visit. Then, too, there were always Hun soldiers on leave or off duty, whj made CHAPTER XIX Continued. 17 1 noticed that all the tlnm he was writing the word and giving us the stationery, the sentry wns laughing nnd having n great time with his owu little self, but I figured he was Just acting German, and that nothing was Important nbout It. We wero till tickled to death to get n chance to let our people know where wo were, and each man thought a long time about what he would say, nnd who he would write to. before ho ever started to write. Kadi man wanted want-ed to say all he could In the small space he had, nnd we wanted to let our friends know how badly they were treating us without saying It In so many words, because we knew the Huns would censor the letters, nnd Jt would go hard with anyone who complained com-plained much. So most of the men snld they were having n great time and were treated very well, nnd spread It on sw thick that their friends would figure Uiey were lying because they had to. One fellow had nn Idea that was better than that, though, lie had been In jail in Portsmouth, England, for throe months, for beatir.g up a countable, cou-ntable, and he had had a pretty rough time. So he wrote n pal of his that he had been captured by the Germans, Ger-mans, but that everything wns going along pretty well. In fact, he said, the only other trip he had ever been on, where he had n better time, was the three months' vacation he had spent In Portsmouth two years before, which he thought the friend would remember. re-member. He said that trip was better bet-ter than this one, &o the friend could figure out for himself how pleasant this one was. Everybody thought tlds was a great idea, but unfortunately not all of us had been in jail, so we could not all use it. Which wns just as well, we thought, because the Germans Ger-mans would be suspicious if all of us compared this vacation with others. A few of the men did not have anybody any-body they could write to, and some did not know their friends' addresses, so they would write letters to friends of the other men, and sign it with the friend's nickname. As soon as a man had finished his letter, he had to go out to the center of the camp, where they had built a raised platform. There the gentries took the letters, and the men formed around the square. There were officers offi-cers on the platform reading the letters. let-ters. We thought they read them there in the open, before us, so that we would know they were not tampering tamper-ing with the letters, nnd we thought the heaven would fall if they were getting so unkultured as that. Finally, all the men had finished their letters and turned them over to the officers, who read them. And then we saw why the sentry laughed. The officers tore up every one of the letters. They were anxious that we would see them do it, so none of us would have any hope that our friends ' would get word. But we said to ourselves that, If it was information they wanted, they had as much as was good for them, which was none at all, because I do not think one letter in the bunch had a single word of truth in it. But we were all very angry and pretty low after that, because it showed the Huns still had plenty of kultur left, after all, and we knew there was rough sledding ahead of us. Also, some of the men were sore because they had wasted their time thinking up different ways of tipping tip-ping their friends off to the real state of affairs, and all for nothing. Why they should worry about time, I could not see. Time was the only thing we had plenty of, and I for one, thought we were going to have still more of It Going back to the barracks we tried to sing "Pack Up Tour Troubles," but there was not much pep in It. We were not dow nhearted, though ; at least, we said we were Hot. CHAPTER XX. Kultur the Real Stuff. Neustrelitz was mainly for Russian prisoners, and there were neither British Brit-ish nor French soldiers Interned there only sailors of the merchant marine such as the men I was with. The Russians were given far worse treatment treat-ment than any other prisoners. This was for two reasons, as near as I could make out. One was that the Russian woold stand most anything, whereas the British and French could only be goaded to a certain point, and beyond that lay trouble. The other reason was that the Russians sent German prisoners to Siberia, or at least, so the Huns thought, and Fritz hates the cold. So, hating the Russians, and realizing that they were used to being be-ing under-dogs, Fritz picked on them nmd bullied them in a way that the rest of tis would not have stood. We would kave rushed them and gone west with bayonets first. The barracks were made of spruce, and were about ninety feet long and twenty-five feet wide, and you can take it from me that as carpeaters, whoever made them were fine farm-prs: farm-prs: There were cracks In them that rou could drive an automobile throigh. FVhcn w rere there, each barracks a hydrant outside of tho barracks, and for a while wo drank II. Hut lifter several of the boys had gone west and we could not figure out why, a man told us he thought the water was poisoned, and a Russian doctor, who was a prisoner, slipped us word nbout It also. So, after that, very few of us drank water from the hydrant. I was scared sIliT at first, because I had had some of the water, but after that I did not touch hydrant water. It was a good thing for us that there was always plenty of snow In Germany, and even luckier (hat the Huns did not shoot us for eating' it. It was about the only thing they did not deprive us of it was not verhoten. I thought I knew what tough coolies were, In the trenches, but they were regular mollycoddles compared to the pets we had in the prison camps. After we boiled our clothes we would bo free from them for not more than two hours, and then they would como back, Willi re-enforcements, thirsting for vengeance. The camp at Neustrelitz was sup-rounded sup-rounded by big dogs, which were kept Just outside the barbed wire. We had them going all the time. Every once in a while, some fellow would make an uwful racket, and the next thing we knew, there was Fritz coming llko a shot, with musket nt his hip, Just as they carry them In a charge, and blowing whistles nt each other until they were blue In the face. Whenever When-ever they thought some one wns escaping, es-caping, they ran twice as fast as I ever saw them run, except when tho Foreign I.egiou was on their heels nt I'ixmud,'. . When they got up to the dogs, they Would first talk to them and then kick them, and nfter that, they would rest their rilles on the wire nnd yell "Zuruck I" nt us. We nil enjoyed this Innocent pastime very much, nnd wo were glad they had the dogs. Tliere were pome things tho nuns did that you Just could not explain. For instance, one of the Russians walked out of the kuche, ns we were passing, nnu we heard a bang! nnd the Russian keeled over and went west. Now, we had not done anything and the other Russians said he had behaved himself, worked hard and had never had nny trouble. They Just killed him, nnd that is all there was to it. Rut not ono of us could figure out w by. After we had been at Neustrelitz for threo weeks, they drilled us out of the camp to a railway station, nnd stood us In the snow for four hours waiting for tho train. We were exhausted ex-hausted nnd began falling, ono by one, nnd each time one of us fell, the sentries would yell, "Nicht krank 1" nnd give us the rific butt. We had our choice of standing up and dying or falling down nnd being killed, and it was a fine choice to have to make. The cars finally pulled In, and as Usual, the windows were smashed, the doors open, nnd the compartments just packed with snow. When we saw this, we knew we were going to get worse treatment, even, than we had been ' getting, and many of us wanted to die. It had not been unusual for soma of the men to tell the Germans to shoot them too, and it seems as though it was always n man who wanted to live who did get it and went west. However, all of us nearly got killed when we reached Wittenberg. When the train stopped there, we saw a big wagonload of sliced bread on tho station sta-tion platform and we all stared at it. We stood It as long as we could, and then we made a rush for it. But when we got nearer, we saw that tliere were four sentries guarding it nnd four women issuing it out to the German soldiers. They would not give us nny, of course. So we stood around and watched tho Huns eat it, while they nnd the women laughed at us, and pretended that they were stnrving and would groan nnd rub their stomachs nnd say, "Nichts zu essen," to each other, nnd then grab a big hunk of bread and eat it. What we did not say to them was very little indeed. We were certainly cer-tainly wild If any men ever were. Then some of us said we were going go-ing to get some of that bread if we went west for It. So we started a fight, and while they were attending to some of us, the others grabbed nnd hid all the bread they could. They rousted us back into the cars and we were Just starting to divide up the bread when they caught us with it and took it away. We were wilder than ever then, but we could not do anything. It got colder after we left Wittenberg, Witten-berg, nnd tho snow blew into the cars through the windows and doors until we were afraid to sleep for fear of freezing. It was the worst night I have ever seen, and the coal bunkers on the Yarrowdale seemed like a palace pal-ace compared to the compartments, because we could at least move around in the ship, while in the train we could not move at all, and were packed so close that we could not even stretch our legs and arms. Some of the men did die, but not in my compartment, though most of us were frost-bitten about the face. We thought that night would never end, but day came finally, and thnngn Tho First and Last Cicaret'e. who did, for I got nn awful b.t that landed me ten or twelve feci away. I I fell on my hands and kners, und I nbout a yard away I saw a cigarette stub. I dived for It like a man fulling I on a football, nnd when I calr.e up ; that stub was safely iu my locket. ' And it stayed tliere until I ref.ched ' I minion nnd had u chance to llgit It behind the barracks. If nny of the other men had smelled real tobrcco, they would probably have murdered . me, nnd I could not have blamed them l for it. That was the first nnd last cigarette I got In Germany, and you can be-j be-j ileve me w hen I' say that I enjoyed j It. There was not much to It, but I ' smoked it until there wns not enough j left to hoi 1 in my mouth, and then I Used what was left nnd mixed It with the bark thnt we made cigarettes out 1 of. Incidentally, this bark was great stuff. I do not know what kind of j tree it was from, but It served the purpose. Whenever a fellow wanted i to smoke nnd lit one of these bark cigarettes, a few puffs were enough. lie did not want to smoke again for some time afterward, and like as not, he did not want to eat cither. They were therefore very vnluablc. It is very hard to get matches In the camps, and when any prisoner does get hold of one, it is made to last a long time. Here Is how we make a match last. Some one gives up tho sleeve of his coat, anc' the match IS carefully lit, nnd thft cont sleeve burned to a crisp. Tl en we take a button from our coatf-the buttons are brass with two h: les in them pass a shoestring throjgh the holes, knot the ends, and wili. the button in the center of the string buzz it around as you have seen boys do, with the string over both hands, moving the hands together and apart until the button revolves very last. We then put a piece of flint against the crisped cloth, and buzz the button against it until a spark makes the crisp glow, nnd from this we would light our bark cigarettes. I do not think any man in the world could inhale in-hale one of these bark cigarettes: some of us tried nnd went right to sleep. (TO BE CONTINUED.) I Mi Mm We Had Our Choics of Standing Up and Dying, or Falling Down and Be-- Be-- Ing Killed. It a point to pay us a visit, and though I do not think they were as bad as the civvies, especially the women, they were bad enough. We had one bucket in each barracks, and as these buckets were used for both washing and drinking, they were always dirty. We boiled the water when we washed the clothes, to get rid of the cooties, and that left a settling in it thnt looked Just like red lead. Ve had to get the water from |