“After another considerable journey, I was put into a motor ambulance, which brought me to my destination. It was dark when I reached this place and I could not see my surroundings. I was carried into a hut-like arrangement, where I found others, German and British soldiers, and some French also.
“I was only a few minutes in this ‘hut’ when a big fat, over-fed, severe-looking German officer came in and growled out something in a rough voice. A nurse rushed up to his side. He growled out something else, and she immediately went out. In less time than it takes to tell, she came back with what no doubt he had been growling for. It was a sheet of paper and he commenced reading from it. It was to the effect that the English prisoners would not be allowed to disobey any of the officers, soldiers, orderlies or nurses—that if they should do so they would be instantly put to death. If they wished to make complaints they were to do so through the orderlies. However, if the complaint should not be a proper and truthful one, the prisoner making it would be liable to be put to death. He also strongly emphasized the fact that if any prisoner was caught attempting to smuggle or write letters, the sentence of death would instantly be imposed on him. At this point he went away.[2]
“My heart sank. I got so homesick and much weaker; my hopes gave out entirely. I had been thinking that, on reaching my destination, I would be allowed to write home; and now——?
“I must have lost consciousness, for it was day time when I awoke, to find two doctors examining my legs, with a number of young students standing around me. One of the doctors, an old man, who spoke excellent English, said that both my thighs were badly fractured and that it would be necessary to operate on me the next morning. Then he commenced explaining to the young doctors. After the explanation was over, they all walked away.
“The next morning I was taken to the operating theatre, which had a gallery all ’round packed with young German students. On the floor there were only a nurse, the old doctor who had spoken to me the previous day, and a few attendants. I was lying on a sort of high-wheel stretcher. The young students were laughing and jeering, when suddenly the old doctor turned on them furiously, using some hot German language, and instantly there was quietness. Then a cap was put under my nose.
“When I came out of the chloroform there was a cage arrangement over my legs and I had no pillow for my head. At the moment I thought it was a very mean trick to do me out of it, but after some experience in the hospital I learned that it was to prevent me from getting sick upon recovering from the effects of the anaesthetic.
“There were about eighteen patients and two nurses in the hut where I was. The nurses took turns of night duty week about. The day nurse during my first week there was a very severe and sour-faced creature. She could speak a little English, and I’m sure she did not speak to me more than twenty times, and not once kindly. The night nurse was a woman about forty years of age. She could speak only a very little English, but she was pleasant and good-natured. She took more care of me than any of them and would bring me a glass of milk now and again when the guards were not looking. She also informed me that this was the place that students came to, for practising and experimenting on the wounded prisoners, and added that I would have a lot more operations—which I had.
“Conditions became worse as months dragged on. It was now summer of 1915, and still my legs were not allowed to set. One operation followed another. I saw an iron plate with rusty screw nails an inch long, that had been used to patch up my thigh bones. I suffered much physically—but worse than that was the mental suffering I experienced, worrying about my folks at home.
“Every other day, young sarcastic doctors would come in, take the splints off, and commence squeezing and turning my broken legs in a painful fashion. Some would shout: ‘English swine, why don’t you cry out?’ but I don’t remember doing so when any of them were near me.
“The food got worse and worse toward winter. I got three meals a day. Breakfast consisted of weak coffee and a slice of black bread with some kind of lard spread on it. Dinner was herring bone or potato-peel soup, or ham-bone soup with a slice of heavy potato bread. Supper was a repetition of breakfast except that very often the lard was absent.