“There were two German patients who got the best of attention. I learned though, that they were wounded in the act of deserting, and were to be court-martialed upon recovery. After they were able to sit up they would get a large jug of beer with their midday meal and this was a keen torture to me.
“I became determined to find some way of communicating with my sweetheart and friends at home, to let them know I was still alive. The night nurse told me she expected to go near the firing line for duty, so I asked her if she could try to smuggle out a letter for me so that it would reach my friends. At first, she very positively refused, saying that should the effort be found out, she would be instantly shot, but after I explained my case to her and pleaded with her she brought me a pencil and note paper and watched a chance when all was quiet. She put a screen round me and whispered in my ear to praise the commandant, and the doctors, and write in the brightest manner of everyone there. Thus, she said, the censor might allow the letter to go through.
“While she watched the guards, I scribbled, doing all she told me to. I described the place and commandant something in the following manner:
This is a most beautiful place. I think it’s the prettiest hospital in the great German Empire. It is even more elaborate than the wonderful Peterhead sanatorium at home, and the commandant is the nicest old gentleman. The staff, here, is also superior. We get the best of food and plenty of it and all kinds of recreation. Even visitors bring English magazines and treat me like a relative.
“After finishing it, I gave it to the nurse to read. I had written all the sheet could contain. She looked it over and seemed very pleased with it and said that it would pass the censor all right. She sealed it, then affixed a stamp, and hid it away in her dress, promising to post it next morning.
“I thought it was rather neat, my working in the Peterhead prison in Aberdeenshire, as a sanatorium.
“After the nurse’s departure, I slept peacefully and with an easy mind, as if a great burden had been lifted from it.
“When the usual batch of sarcastic young German students came next morning and started in jeering at me, I smiled. One of them instantly leaped forward and gave me a stinging blow on the face with his open palm. I managed to contain myself—but how I did it, I don’t know.
“That same evening, the commandant came in raging. He nearly ate me up, while in the act of producing the letter I had written the previous night. I longed so for the ground to open and swallow me up. He said the penalty for the offence was death. At first I denied that I knew anything about the letter, but he shouted: ‘Do you not remember giving the same address upon coming here?’