One morning an orderly went round the ward distributing postcards to enable the patients to write to their relations and friends.
"Wonder if I can get a letter through to New Zealand?" thought Malcolm. "I'll have a cut at it anyhow."
Greatly to the curiosity of an observant nurse, the lad obtained a postcard, and wrote to his father, signing himself "R/m 99,109, Malcolm Carr, N.Z.R.B., prisoner of war."
The nurse, puzzled that the patient could write and yet be unable to read, called a doctor's attention to the fact, and Malcolm's postcard was kept back for examination.
Within five minutes the hospital ward was in a state of uproar, for the discovery had been made that an enemy was enjoying the same treatment and attention as a good German. After being subjected to a searching and protracted examination, the questions being written in English, Malcolm was summarily "fired out" to an unknown destination.
Escorted by two Landsturmers, and garbed in very motley attire, the New Zealander was marched through the streets to the railway station, and after a six-hour journey the train stopped at a small station that, from the name on the Fahrkartenausgabe, was called Düren. In what part of Germany Düren was situated Malcolm had not the faintest idea. He had yet to learn that it was a small town in Rhenish Prussia roughly midway between Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne.
The prisoner kept his eyes open during his progress through the narrow streets. Everywhere were signs of industrial activity. The workshops were disgorging their occupants--old men, women, and children, whose emaciated features contrasted vividly with those of the prosperous munition-workers in Great Britain. At the outskirts of the town was a large, newly-erected factory, from which Gotha machines, their wings folded for transit, were being taken away in large motor-lorries, while sandwiched between the building and the outskirts of the town proper was a large barbed-wire compound within which were rows of wooden huts.
This was Malcolm's prison camp. So great was the Huns' fear of air raids over the industrial towns of the Rhine valley that several of the larger places of detention for prisoners of war had been broken up, and the men sent to numerous small camps in close proximity to towns within the radius of hostile airmen.
"This will be a tight hole to squeeze through," soliloquized the new arrival, as he noted the elaborate precautions taken against any attempt on the part of the prisoners to escape. The double gateway was strongly guarded by armed troops, assisted by a particularly ferocious-looking type of dog. Between the outer and inner rectangular fences, a distance of fifty feet, more guards kept vigilant watch; while at frequent intervals tall look-out boxes had been erected to enable the sentries to keep the whole of the camp under observation. Both fences were made of barbed wire, supported by massive posts, and so Criss-crossed that even a cat would have had considerable difficulty in creeping through without injury from the sharp spikes.
Having handed over their charge, the two Landsturmers were given a receipt for the delivery of the prisoner, and then dismissed.