Three Times and Out / Told by Private Simmons, Written by Nellie L. McClung

by Mervin C. Simmons; Nellie L. McClung

That night Ted and I slept on two benches in the middle of the room, but we found that what the boys said was true. They had crawled up on us, or else had fallen from the ceiling, or both. We had them!

But the next day we made the trip to Cellelager by special train—"The Louse Train" it was called.

The fumigator was the same as at Giessen, and it did its work well. While the clothes were baking, we stood in a well-heated room to wait for them. The British and French, having received parcels, were in good condition, but the Russians, who had to depend entirely on the prison-fare, were a pitiful sight. They looked, when undressed, like the India famine victims, with their washboard ribs and protruding stomachs, dull eyes and parched skin. The sores caused by the lice were deep and raw, and that these conditions, together with the bad water and bad food, had had fatal results, could be seen in the Russian cemetery at Cellelager I, where the white Russian crosses stand, row on row. The treatment of Russian prisoners will be a hard thing for Germany to explain to the nations when the war is over.

Parnewinkel was the name of the village near Cellelager I, and this name was printed on the prison-stamps which we used. The camp was built on a better place than the last one, and it was well drained, but the water was bad and unfit to drink unless boiled.

As the spring came on, many of the Russians went out to work with the farmers, and working parties, mostly made up of Russians, were sent out each day. Their work was to dig ditches through the marshes, to reclaim the land. To these working parties soup was sent out in the middle of the day, and I, wishing to gain a knowledge of the country, volunteered for "Suppentragen."

A large pot, constructed to hold the heat by having a smaller one inside which held the soup, was carried by two of us, with a stick through the handle, to the place where the Russians were working, and while they were attending to the soup, we looked around and learned what we could of the country. I saw a method of smoking meat which was new to me, at a farmhouse near where the Russians were making a road. Edwards and I, with some others, had carried out the soup. The Russians usually ate their soup in the cow-stable part of the house, but the British and Canadians went right into the kitchen. In this house everything was under one roof—that is, cows, chickens, kitchen, and living-room—and from the roof of the kitchen the hams were hung. The kitchen stove had two or three lengths of pipe, just enough to start the smoke in the right direction, but not enough to lead it out of the house. Up among the beams it wound and curled and twisted, wrapping the hams round and round, and then found its way out in the best way it could. Of course some of it wandered down to the kitchen where the women worked, and I suppose it bothered them, but women are the suffering sex in Germany; a little smoke in their eyes is not here or there.

The houses we saw had thatched roofs, with plastered walls, and I think in every case the cow-stable was attached. Dairying was the chief industry; that and the raising of pigs, for the land is poor and marshy. Still, if the war lasts long enough, the bad lands of Germany will be largely reclaimed by the labor of Russian prisoners. It's cheap and plentiful. There were ninety thousand of them bagged in one battle in the early days of the war, at the Mazurian Lakes! The Russians are for the most part simple, honest fellows, very sad and plaintive, and deserving of better treatment than they have had.

When the Russians had gone out to work, leaving only the sick ones, and the English and French, sometimes there were not enough well prisoners for "Suppentragen," for the British were clever in the matter of feigning sickness. The Revier was in charge of a doctor and a medical Sergeant, who gave exemption from work very easily. Then there were ways of getting sick which were confusing to doctors.

Some one found out how to raise a swelling, and there was quite an epidemic of swollen wrists and ankles. A little lump of earth in a handkerchief, pounded gently on the place, for twenty minutes or so, will bring the desired result. Soap-pills will raise the temperature. Tobacco, eaten, will derange the heart. These are well-known methods of achieving sick-leave.

I had a way all my own. I had a loose toe-nail, quite ready to come off, but I noticed it in time, and took great care not to let it come off. Then I went to the doctor to have it removed. On that I got exemption till the nail grew.