Into the Jaws of Death

by Jack O'Brien

Scotty: "Yes, but I was not working on a mine in the front line."

Interpreter: "Then what were you doing?"

Scotty: "Well, it was like this; I was only in the trenches twice, the first time our Corporal put me on a fatigue party and I was carrying up sandbags and rations."

Interpreter: "Is that all you did?"

Scotty: "Yes, Sir."

Interpreter: "Then what were you working at the second time you were in the lines?—you were surely put in a sap this time."

I could see that both the General and the interpreter were getting quite peeved, but Scotty answered smilingly: "I will tell you what I did. The Sergeant in charge gave me a long stick with a nail in the end, and I had this stick in one hand and a sandbag in the other, and my work was to go through the trenches picking up all the paper, cigarette boxes, and tin cans." When this speech was interpreted to the General, the old boy was wild. I think he would gladly have put an end to us right there, but he only shouted an order to the guards, and we were hustled to the door and kicked out. When we picked ourselves up, we sat down on the steps and had a good laugh. Evidently the General was not satisfied with the information he received, for none of the others were taken in. We were all taken back to the stable and left there till the next morning, then we were marched off to the railway station and loaded on a train for Germany.

We travelled in cattle and box cars, and we did not sit up to see the sights because all of us were wounded or injured in some way. My back was badly strained when I was buried in the sap and I was bruised from head to foot. I had had nothing to eat all day excepting the small piece of black bread given to us in the morning. It was about 9 P.M. when we made our first stop in Germany, and this was at a large prison camp near Dulmen, Westphalia. Dulmen is a beautiful large city; and the camp is two miles out. At first sight a prison camp looks very much like a chicken ranch; the high wire fences around the whole enclosure and the little frame huts in the centre all carry out the idea. But when you get in, there is a vast difference, the outside fence is fourteen feet high, and of barb-wire with the barbs poisoned; three yards in, there is another fence, a low one this time, to prevent the "chickens" getting under, and this is made of live wire. In between these fences there is a line of German guards, each one having his own beat. The centre of the camp is divided into small blocks, each with its fourteen-foot fence of poisoned wire; there are six huts in each block and about fifty prisoners quartered in each hut. When I was there the camp contained about three thousand prisoners—French, Russian, English, and a few Canadians. But, to go back to my arrival. As we were marched into the camp we were a pretty sorry-looking lot. The old prisoners saw us coming, and rushed back to their huts and brought us out some food. The new prisoners were not allowed to mingle with the old ones until they had been two months in camp—I suppose this was to prevent any news getting in—so in order to do anything for us, the old prisoners had to catch us on our way through. Well, they brought us, from the contents of their Red Cross parcels, hardtack, biscuits, bully-beef, and jam, and when we reached our hut we had a pretty good meal. The boys had none too much for themselves and it meant a great deal to give up any of their precious food; but they knew, from experience, that we were starving, and we thought we were, for after good army rations, one small slice of black bread does not go far towards satisfying hunger. But, after existing on German fare for two months, we knew what it was to be really hungry; we were more like famished wolves than human beings.

This is a day's ration, served out to us the first day in camp, and in the two months I was there it never varied: for breakfast, a small bowl of coffee made from dried acorns, and served without milk or sugar. It was so bitter as to be almost undrinkable, and there was not one morsel of food given with it. For dinner we were allowed a bowl of stuff they called soup. It was made by boiling cabbage and turnips with a few dog bones; when I went there first I wouldn't believe the boys when they told me that our soup was made of dog bones, but one day I met one of the French prisoners who had been a doctor, and we went for a walk around the grounds, so I asked him what kind of an animal went into our soup and he told me it was just ordinary dog. We argued the question for several minutes, and I was still unconvinced, so he said, "Go into the cook house and see for yourself." I went, and the cook (who was a French prisoner) very obligingly lifted out some bones with his long spoon and showed me one of Fido's legs. That settled the question, and, naturally, I enjoyed the soup more than ever. As an extra treat, to give it a special flavour, sometimes they threw in the bark. The boys had taken their own way of finding out what they were eating—they saved all the bones for several days and then they put them together—the result was a German Dachshund. We had nothing but this soup for dinner, and for supper we were given a bowl of slop which the boys called "sand-storm," and a three-pound loaf of Deutschland black bread to be divided among ten of us. This bread was made from ground vegetables mixed with rye flour. If you read Gerard's "Four Years in Germany" you will see that samples of this food were examined by a specialist and declared to be almost devoid of food value. It was planned to reduce our numbers by a process of slow starvation.

We used to fight over the garbage cans for the peelings of potatoes, and cabbage, and when the old prisoners, who were getting their Red Cross boxes, brought us their German issue of soup, it was not safe for them to come inside our enclosure. They would place the can inside the gate and we fought over it like a pack of hungry wolves. If you think we are exaggerating, see Gerard's new picture film "My Four Years in Germany." It tells better than I can just how bad things were. Well, one day when our soup was handed in by the other prisoners a funny thing happened; we had seen the boys coming and had made a rush to the huts to get our bowls—a very short fellow reached the soup can first and before he could get his bowl filled, we had all crowded in on top of him—poor Shorty had his head and arm in the soup and was almost drowned before we got him out. He had soup everywhere except in the bowl. Every British prisoner had to put up with this kind of food for the first two months; after that, the Red Cross parcels would begin to arrive. The condition of the Russian prisoners was indeed pitiable. They received no help from home, and were depending solely on German food. A Russian can live on much less than a Britisher, but they literally starved to death on what the Germans gave them. They were made to work, and when they could go no longer and fell down from sheer weakness the Guard would beat them till they died. I have seen this happen again and again, and there was an average of fifteen deaths every day among the Russians alone. Our parcels came just in time to save the strongest of us, but scores of the weaker ones died. But just here let me explain the system used by the Red Cross for getting food to the boys in the prison camps. As soon as a new prisoner reaches the camp he is given a card which he fills in and sends to the Red Cross Headquarters in London. This card contains his name and number, and the number of the camp that he is in. It takes about two months to get the first parcel through; after that he received six food parcels and two of tobacco each month, and once in six months they send him a complete outfit of clothes, from overcoat to boots, also a parcel of toilet articles, such as toothbrush, shaving outfit, soap, etc. From the time these parcels reach the Dutch border, they are handled by a staff of our own prisoners, so there is no danger of their going astray. The Germans examine the parcels before they are given out to make sure that they do not contain maps or compasses for the prisoners; that is the only time they handle them.