Crossing the river and leaving the valley through which it flowed, we quickly entered a wild tract of country, through which the only road was a rough cart track. The soil was peaty with a deep layer of sand and black dust on the top of it. For the first two or three miles we passed through several very fine pine forests interspersed with young plantations and rough scrub.
This type of country gave way to a flat marshy-looking area covered with rank vegetation and stunted fir-trees. Streams and ditches cut up the land, and it struck one as being a very wet place even in the summer, in winter it would probably be a swamp.
At last we reached the camp and found ourselves looking at a collection of wooden huts with tarred felt roofs, surrounded by a barbed wire fence, seemingly planted at random in the midst of the wildness.
CHAPTER III[ToC]
SCHWARMSTEDT CAMP
Our first sight of this camp hardly encouraged us to think that we were going to a better place than Crefeld. An ominous silence fell upon the incoming prisoners! And it was a particularly sulky lot who faced the new commandant when he had them formed up in front of him.
He admitted the bad state of the camp in his very first speech, and hoped that we would put up with it as he himself was powerless to alter matters.