The daily routine may be summed up as follows:
The first call in the morning is when the door is thrown open and breakfast announced. All in the room then scamper down to the yard and into the mess-room already described.
About nine o’clock the door is again opened and a voice shouts in tones loud enough to be heard by all, “Sick Call.” Then all who have need of medicine or treatment go to the hospital, located in a two-story wooden building, an extension of the main building, and reached by a flight of steps leading up from the prison yard.
The next sensation is the dinner call. This gives the prisoners a half-hour, most of which, if not all, is spent in the yard. The yard is about one hundred feet square, partly paved with bricks or cobble-stones.[E] On the side of this yard, extending from this wooden building occupied as sutler’s shop, mess-room and hospital, and running back to the gate, is a one-story stone building in which are the cook house, guard house and wash house. Back of this building are the sinks used by the prisoners. These are wide trenches with a long wooden rail in front, after the manner of the trenches in the camps, except that when those in the camps become offensive they are filled in with earth and new ones dug. The presence of these sinks, used for months by several hundred men, it may be safely said, did not contribute to the beauty of the scenery or add sweetness to the tainted air. Any further description, I think, is better left to the imagination than expressed in words.
STOVE WHICH STOOD IN CENTER OF ROOM 16
After returning to our rooms there is another lull until supper-time, when we enjoy the freedom of the prison yard until it is rudely broken into by the gruff voice of the sergeant: “Time’s up. Go to your rooms.”
Next comes the roll-call, when the prisoners are lined up in their respective rooms to answer to their names as called.
Lastly, taps is sounded, by the guard marching through the halls and calling out at the doors of the rooms: “Lights out.” At this warning cry every light must be extinguished, and the prisoners are compelled to go to their bunks or sit in the dark. And here is where our rusty fat pork, saved by us from the mess-room table, is made do good service.
One night we sat around the stove, with a quantity of this over-rich food, contributed by the inmates of our room, one of whom sat in front of the stove and threw in piece by piece as it burned away. This shed a light over the room, and it was seen by the sentry pacing his beat in front of the building. He called out “Corporal of the guard, Post No. 1.”