One day at Parnewinkel, Edwards and I were called into the Commandant's office, whither we went with many misgivings—we did not know how much he knew of us and our plans.
But the honest man only wanted to pay us. Edwards had worked quite a bit at Vehnemoor, but I couldn't remember that I had worked at all. However, he insisted that I had one and a half days to my credit, and paid me twenty-seven pfennigs, or six and three quarter cents! I remembered then that I had volunteered for work on the bog, for the purpose of seeing what the country was like around the camp. I signed a receipt for the amount he gave me, and the transaction was entered in a book, and the receipt went back to the head camp.
"Look at that," said Ted; "they starve us, but if we work they will pay us, even taking considerable pains to thrust our wages upon us. Of a truth they are a 'spotty' people."
However, the reason for paying us for our work was not so much their desire to give the laborer his hire as that the receipts might be shown to visitors, and appear in their records.
The Russians had a crucifix at the end of the hut which they occupied, and a picture of the Virgin and the Holy Child before which they bowed and crossed themselves in their evening devotions. Not all of them took part. There were some unbelieving brothers who sat morosely back, and took no notice, wrapped in their own sad thoughts. I wondered what they thought of it all! The others humbly knelt and prayed and cried out their sorrows before the crucifix. Their hymns were weird and plaintive, yet full of a heroic hope that God had not forgotten.
One of them told me that God bottles up the tears of his saints, hears their cry, and in His own good time will deliver all who trust in Him. That deliverance has already come to many of them the white-crossed graves, beyond the marsh, can prove. But surely, somewhere an account is being kept of their sorrows and their wrongs, and some day will come the reckoning! Germany deserves the contempt of all nations, if it were for nothing else than her treatment of the Russian prisoners.
When my toe-nail began to grow on, I got permanent exemption from work because of my shoulder, and was given the light task of keeping clear the ditches that ran close beside the huts.
I often volunteered on parcel parties, for I liked the mile and a half walk down the road through the village of Parnewinkel to Selsingen, where there was a railway station and post-office. Once in a while I saw German women sending parcels to soldiers at the front.