The prisoners spent most of their time at Osnabruck in playing tennis, football, walking up and down the yard, learning French or Russian, playing cards, or reading.
The books which prisoners receive from time to time from England are passed round, thus forming a sort of circulating library.
In living a life of this kind one cannot help but develop the habits of school-days, and become boyish in many things.
One lives for letters and parcels. It is not the length of letters or size of parcels which count so much as the number; and when the parcel list comes round, he is a lucky fellow who finds four or five parcels awaiting him, even though their total contents amount to no more than that of the man who receives a single parcel.
On Tuesdays and Fridays the number of parcels was an absorbing topic, and one would turn to another in schoolboy fashion, and say:
"How many parcels have you got to-day?"
"Only one—how many have you?"
"Six."
"Lucky devil!"
In each room the men throw their parcels into one mess, and share alike; and if a new prisoner arrives, who would not be receiving parcels, he shares with the others in his room.