On one occasion we saw flags flying over the city, and that evening for supper we were given a hard-boiled egg. We were told it was the Empress's birthday. We made anxious inquiries as to when the Kaiser and the Crown Prince would have a birthday.
A few days after I arrived at Hanover, my right eye was removed, and the following day the doctor told me, through an interpreter, that I should be sent back to England. I asked when I should be sent, and was told in three or four weeks.
It was about this time that I began to develop an unsatiable appetite for sweet things. I have found that many have had the same experience, after a period of privation following upon their wounds. I would buy up all the jam, chocolate, and toffy I could lay my hands on, which came in parcels to other prisoners. When I wrote home for parcels to be sent to me, I hardly mentioned food, which afterwards became so necessary, but asked for sweet stuff.
But what I needed more urgently than anything else was money. When I was picked up the only cash I had on me was two francs, and this I exchanged for a mark and sixty pfennigs, which, with five marks I was able to borrow, kept me going for a while. But it was soon gone, and I found myself without a sou, and no pay due for six weeks.
About ten days after I arrived at Hanover I was able to sit out in the garden, and from then on I began to mend.
Saniez used to dress me, and his watchful eye was upon me wherever I went.
Sometimes of an afternoon I used to sit by the fire. I used to like sitting by the fire, because its warmth misled me into thinking I could distinguish the light. If I happened to be rather quiet Saniez would come to my side, and I would feel that he was watching me. Then he would speak, and each would find some word to make the other understand:
"Cigarette, Capitaine?"
"Oui, Saniez."
He would take one of his own cigarettes, put it in my mouth and light it.