The foregoing was deposed to by the witness Dorozhka on examination by the Examining Magistrate of the 1st Dnieprovsky District.
VII. Ill-Treatment of Prisoners of War.
In June, 1915, three Russian officers, Captain Kosmachevsky, Lieutenant Griaznov, and Sub-lieutenant Yarotsky, escaped from German captivity and reached Russia in safety.
They were made prisoners in East Prussia in August, 1914. Together with other captured officers, they were driven on foot to the town of Neidenburg, and at one place on the way were made to serve as cover for a German battery, which was in danger of attack from Russian artillery fire.
For this purpose the prisoners were put into two-wheeled carts and ordered to wave white flags and flags with the Red Cross, and these carts were placed in front of the battery. At the same time the prisoners were warned, that if only a single projectile fell into this German battery, they would all be shot for it.
Four days these prisoners were on the march. At night they were compelled to sleep in the open in roadside ditches, although there were villages near by, and all that time they received no food, but only coffee, without sugar, milk or bread, served up in pails. Along the road the inhabitants and troops whom they met cursed and insulted them, tore off their shoulder straps, threatened them with their fists, spat at them and shouted “To Berlin!”
Before the prisoners were put into the train they were searched, and in this way many of them lost their gold watches and money. The Cossack officers especially were subjected to very strict search, in the course of which they were stripped naked. These Cossack officers were separated from the others and sent off with the private soldier prisoners.
In the first instance the officer prisoners were interned in the fortress of Neisse in Silesia, and were subsequently removed to Kreisfeld, beyond the Rhine.
The prisoners, according to their own account, were kept in horrible conditions. They were lodged in dirty barracks where the windows were shut fast and the glass of the panes covered with oil paint. It was forbidden to approach these windows under pain of being fired at by the sentries. This threat was once carried out, when an officer wished to make a drawing at one of the windows. Fortunately nobody was hurt. The imprisoned officers had to sleep in dirty beds full of bugs, lice, and other vermin. Their meagre fare was served up on dirty tables, littered with straw, whilst alongside were other tables, covered with clean tablecloths and decently furnished even to the extent of glasses for beer, and on these tables dinner was served for the sentries, German subalterns, who looked on at the prisoners and their wretched accommodation in the most insolent manner.
All the imprisoned officers were formed into companies, commanded by rough and rude sergeant-majors, who treated them like common soldiers.