"By Jove, I'll bet you're hungry," a big fellow said, reaching up into his bunk and bringing out a pasteboard parcel. "Here you are, matey; there's a bit of cheese and biscuits. I've a bit of water heatin', too; we'll get you something to drink. Get something into you; we ain't bad done for 'ere with our parcels comin' reglar."
The other men brought out boxes, too,—currant-loaf, sardines, fruit-cake, and chocolate. There were three coal-stoves in the room, and on one of these a pan of water was steaming. They had condensed milk and cocoa, and made us up mugs of it, and I never, anywhere, tasted anything so good.
There were two tiers of bunks in the room, but around the wall there was an open space where there were some little tables. Two of the Englishmen, who were playing cards, put them away and offered us their table.
"Here, boys, be comfortable; sit right down here and let us see you eat."
We let them see us! We ate like wolf-hounds. We ate, not until we were satisfied, but until we were ashamed! And still the invitations to eat were heard on every side. We were welcome to the last crumb they had!
When at last we stopped, they began to tell us about the camp. It seemed that the distinguishing feature was lice! It had never been fumigated, and the condition was indescribable. "We're bad enough," one of the Englishmen said, "but the Russians are in holes."
Then they told us what they had done to attract the attention of the authorities. The branch camps are never inspected or visited, as are the main camps such as Cellelager itself and Giessen, and so conditions in the out-of-the-way camps have been allowed to sink far below the level of these.
"We each wrote a card to some one in England, telling them about the lice. We would have stretched it—if we could—but we couldn't. We drew pictures, and told what these lice could do; especially we told about the Russians, and how bad they were. There are twenty-one of us, and there went out twenty-one cards all dealing with the same subject. The censor began to feel crawly, I'll bet, before he got far into reading them, and he would not let one of those cards out of Germany. It wouldn't have sounded very good to the neutral countries. So along came one of the head officers. He came in swaggering, but, by George, he went out scratching! And he certainly got something moving. We're all going down to Cellelager to-morrow to be fumigated; and while we're out, there's going to be a real old-fashioned house-cleaning! You're just in time, boys. Have you got any?"
"We did not have any," we said, "when we came."
"Well, you'll get them here, just sitting around. They're all over the floor and crawl up the leg of your chair; they crawl up the wall and across the ceiling and drop down on your head and down the back of your collar; they're in the walls and in the beds now. But their days are numbered, for we are all going up to Cellelager to-morrow to be fumigated. They're running a special train, and taking us all."