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Show HELD A PRISONER FOR FOUR YEARS French Judge Returns to Battered Remains of Cambrai Home. HID PRICELESS CITY RECORD Refused to Leave Post When Hun Hordes Poured Through His Country Coun-try Tells of Cruelties Inflicted Inflict-ed by Invaders. Paris. There reached Paris recently recent-ly a fine-looking old French gentleman, sad-eyed, hollow-cheeked. For four years he had been held prisoner by the Germans in the city of Cambrai. He had seen the Hun kaiser three times passing through the streets of his city which previously had been swept by the French women. Night after night he had been forced to go and sit In the railroad stations of the city while the British bombed them. He had seen his friends, people once wealthy and of high birth, sent out to dig trenches, to bury the dead and to cultivate and weed the fields. For two years he had only soup and cocoa for his dinner and a semi-nionthly allowance allow-ance of three-quarters of a pound of meat and black bread. Henri Bergier reached Paris just as the news came from the front that British and American troops had freed his home. As soon as he is strong enough to travel again he will return there to find, if possible, the priceless records of the city which he hid lu 191-1 when the Huns swept across Belgium Bel-gium and Invaded northern France. As a Judge of a tribunal or court of Cambrai, Bergier refused to leave his post when the German hordes poured through his country In August, 1914. By a trick of chance he had just sent his wife and three daughters to BouIogne-sur-Mer, on the coast of France, for a holiday and was planning plan-ning to join thern early In September. The meeting was deferred just four years. He was captured, but was spared the bitterness of seeing his family subjected to the humiliations which came to the other women of Cambrai. His wife and daughters at once volunteered for hospital service and worked so heroically for three years that they were decorated by the French government with the medal "des epidemles et du devouement." The story which Bergier brought back was one of want and suffering. The Germans held him as hostage so he was not maltreated. Whenever the city was bombed, however, he was sent with three other judges, also held as hostages, to sit In the railway stations sta-tions so that they would be killed if the traffic centers were destroyed. The people of the city who did not hold ofliciul positions were treated more summarily. The women were all made to do menial work of some kind, such as sweeping the streets of the city or cultivating and weeding weed-ing the fields. The young boys and men were sent out to dig trenches and to bury the dead. Turned Out of Homes. Family after family was turned out of homes to make place for the wives of the German officers who came to stay in Cambrai with their husbands and for German actresses and singers sing-ers who were brought from Germany to stage performances of grand opera and to make merry in the casinos. The prisons were kept filled with "offenders." Early in September Bergier was told that an exchange had been effected and he was to return to France. He would be permitted to take with him what belongings he could carry. He found an old baby carriage with two wheels off and patched it up with wheels from a dismantled gun. His clothing, though threadbare, still held together, but he had no shoes at all. He took the leather portfolio which his youngest daughter had used to carry to school and made a sort of footgear out of it, using for soles the belting from a machine in an abandoned aban-doned factory, j Part of his journey to Belgium he ma(1e on foot, pushing his belongings along in the old baby carriage. Part j he made by train. From Belgium M. Bergier went to Switzerland, finally arriving in Paris where he rejoined his family. |