Heavy work and slender rations.
We were greeted with considerable interest by the other prisoners. There were about two hundred of our men there and all of them seemed in bad shape. They had been subjected to the heaviest kind of work on the slenderest rations and were pretty well worn out.
A strike for safeguards.
Some of us were selected for the mine and some were told off for coke making, which, as we soon learned, was sheer unadulterated hell. I was selected for the coke mine and put in three days at it—three days of smarting eyes and burning lungs, of aching and weary muscles. Then my chum, Billy Flanagan, was buried under an avalanche of falling coal and killed. There were no safeguards in the mine and the same accident might occur again at any time. So we struck.
Kept at "attention" thirty-six hours.
The officers took it as a matter of course. We were lined up and ordered to stand rigidly at "attention." No food was served, not even a glass of water was allowed us. We stood there for thirty-six hours. Man after man fainted from sheer exhaustion. When one of us dropped he was dragged out of the ranks to a corner, where a bucket of water was thrown over him, and, as soon as consciousness returned, he was yanked to his feet and forced to return to the line. All this time sentries marched up and down and if one of us moved he got a jab with the butt end of the gun. Every half hour an officer would come along and bark out at us:
"Are you for work ready now?"
Finally, when some of our fellows were on the verge of insanity, we gave in in a body.
Awakened at 4 a. m.
Turnip soup the chief article of diet.