“Intern us in the prison camp, the same as they started to do. We’ll have to work and eat next to nothing and it’ll be pretty tough all around. But we’ll make another break for liberty at the first opportunity.”
“Here’s hoping it comes soon,” declared Chester.
The train slowed down, then stopped.
“Villingen; everybody change,” sang out a Yankee soldier in the rear of the car.
CHAPTER XVIII
GERMAN BARBARISM
Under the muzzles of hundreds of German guns, the prisoners disembarked and were herded together near what Hal and Chester saw was an improvised station.
Villingen was located in one of the few mining districts in Germany not far from the Swiss border. Families of the miners had long since departed, but the Germans still extracted some coal from the ground by using prisoners of war beneath the surface.
It was for such work that Hal and the other American prisoners had been brought to Villingen. While German prisoners captured by the Allies had always been well treated, Allied prisoners in German camps had been forced to undergo cruel and inhuman treatment from the early days of the war. A peculiar feature was the fact that seldom did the German authorities distinguish between officers and privates. Often British or French officers labored side by side with private soldiers in the mines and in the fields.
When the prisoners had been herded together, the German commandant of the camp approached. He was a porkish-looking individual and typically Prussian. He answered to the name of Colonel Bretz. The officer who had been in charge of the train of prisoners approached and engaged the commandant in conversation.
By the frequent looks that the pair cast at Hal and Chester, the lads knew that they were the chief subjects of the conversation. Directly the commandant walked up to them.