There was a football ground at this camp, and a theatre for the prisoners to use, but in the week we were there I saw only one game of football.
At the end of a week we were moved again, most of us. They did not, of course, tell us where we were going, but as they picked out all of us who had ever tried to escape—and all those who had refused to work—we were pretty sure it was not a "Reward of Merit" move.
We were awakened at a very early hour and were started off to the station, loaded with stuff. We had blankets, wash-basin, empty mattress, and wooden clogs. The boys did not take kindly to the wooden clogs, and under cover of the darkness—for it was long before daylight—they threw them away. The road to the station the next morning must have looked as if a royal wedding party had gone by.
This time we were glad to be able to see where we were going, although it was a dismal, barren country we travelled through, with many patches of heather moor and marsh. The settlements were scattered and the buildings poor. But even if we did not think much of the country, we liked the direction, for it was northwest, and was bringing us nearer Holland.
At Bremen, the second largest seaport in Germany, we stayed a couple of hours, but were not let out of our car, so saw nothing of the city.
At about four o'clock in the afternoon, we arrived in Oldenburg, and began our eight-mile march to Vehnemoor Camp, which is one of the Cellelager group and known as Cellelager VI. We were glad to dispose of our packs by loading them on a canal-boat, which we pulled along by ropes, and we arrived at the camp late in the evening.
This camp had but a few prisoners in it when we came, but there were nearly four hundred of us, and we filled it to overflowing. There were three tiers of bunks where the roof was high enough to admit of it, and that first night we were there we slept on our empty mattresses. However, we still had our Red Cross blanket and the two German blankets apiece, and we managed to keep warm. There were two rooms with two peat stoves in each room.
The camp was built beside a peat bog, on ground from which the peat had been removed, and there was no paving of any kind around it. One step from the door brought us to the raw mud, and the dirt inside the camp was indescribable. There were no books or papers; the canteen sold nothing but matches, notepaper, and something that tasted remotely like buckwheat honey.
The first morning the Commandant addressed us, through an interpreter. He told us he had heard about us. There was dead silence at that; we were pretty sure we knew what he had heard. Then he told us that some of us had refused to work and some had tried to escape; he was grieved to hear these things! He hoped they would not happen again. It was foolish to act this way, and would meet with punishment (we knew that). If we would retain his friendship, we must do as we were told. There was no other way to retain his friendship. He repeated that. Some of us felt we could get along without his friendship better than without some other things. We noticed from the first that he didn't seem sure of himself.
Then came roll-call!