An officer receives pay from the German Government on the following scale: lieutenant, sixty marks per month; captain, one hundred marks per month. The German Government recover the payments from the English Government, and it is charged against the officers' pay in England.
No food is supplied free to officers either in hospital or camp; and they cannot purchase anything beyond the regular issue.
With the exception of the dinner, I found the food of very little use to me for the first week or two, as having lost the power in my jaw, and being unable to open it more than half an inch, I couldn't tackle the rolls, and what couldn't be eaten had to be left; there was no substitute.
There was another diet, in which the coffee was replaced by hot milk, which would have been very desirable, except that the dinner consisted of some filthy substance, which was very unpalatable.
For the first week, therefore, I had practically only one meal a day, the dinner; but afterwards, by dint of changing from one diet to another I managed to get the dinner of No. 1 diet, and the milk of No. 2.
There was a canteen in the hospital where cigarettes, chocolates, biscuits, and eggs were offered for sale.
The biscuits were never in stock; the chocolate, though high in price, was so thin that there was nothing of it; and the cigarettes were unsmokable.
It was a sorry day when we could get no more eggs. We used to depend upon the eggs for supper; for the cheese was uneatable, the brawn suspicious, and the sausage like boiled linoleum. German sausage at the best of time is open to argument; but German sausage in a country which has been blockaded for two and a half years is worthy of serious thought.
The surgical attention was good, though the Russian prisoners who assisted were apt to be rough; and as neither the German doctor nor his Russian assistant could understand each other, and the wounded could understand neither, nor be understood in turn, the situation was sometimes difficult.
The doctor visited each bed at 8 A.M. every morning to inquire the condition of the wounded; but whatever you had to say—which of course he did not understand—the reply was always: "Goot, Goot."