The first incident I should like to tell you about is as we were being 
marched away, wounded prisoners, about 12 of us. I happened to be the last 
one in the crowd, walking along the road, when a German soldier came rushing 
out of a cottage, and got hold of me & pushed me inside this cottage.  He 
started shouting something at me in German but of course I could not 
understand him, in fact I got ‘the wind up’.  I thought maybe I was going to 
be shot.  I was crippled in both arms & therefore could not defend myself in 
any way.  He took me into a bedroom.  What were there but two English 
soldiers, very badly wounded, & he wanted me to cheer them up.  It struck me 
that it was a humane act on his part as I had heard so much about the Germans 
being cruel and wicked. 

The first night we spent out in the open, without shelter, having had no food 
or drink all that day.  Next morning we went round to the German cookhouse to 
see if we could get something warm to drink.  The German cook made us 
understand that if we could find something to hold it he would give us some 
coffee, so we went hunting round the field and found some old corned beef 
tins which had been out in the rain for weeks.  By Jove we enjoyed that 
coffee (or apology for coffee).

Shortly afterwards we were marched on towards Lille.  We came to a French 
village & the women took us into a house & gave us a good French feed of 
brown bread and coffee.  After that hundreds of us were put in a hospital 
train.  We were in that train for four days and four nights. We then went 
right along the Rhine for three days.  Beautiful country, but of course we 
didn’t enjoy it.  Would rather go there for a holiday.

We landed at last in Bavaria, somewhere near Munich, (they call it Munchen) 
in a hospital right in the country.  I shall never forget the nice, clean 
look of the cots, as I had not been in a proper bed for nearly 12 months 
then.  They took all our clothes from us and gave us some kind of cotton 
pyjamas, which we wore both day and night.  You can imagine how we used to 
shiver with cold, for it was about April then.

They treated us all right, did the best they could for us with what they had.

At 8 o’clock each morning we would get a bowl of coffee and a small piece of 
black, sour bread.  We had sour crout(sic) (green cabbage pickled) and a few 
potatoes for dinner at about 12 o’clock.  The boys used to carry the sour 
crout from the cookhouse to the hospital.  We sometimes had for dinner fried 
potatoes and jam mixed.  For tea we often had a couple of potatoes in their 
jackets and that finished the day.

All the allies were represented in this hospital, Italians, Russians, 
Serbians, Rumanians, Belgians etc.  There was one old Italian who had been to 
America for a couple of years & we asked him if he could understand English.  
He said he could speak “a little bit of Americano”.  This fellow used to help 
in the cookhouse and we would ask him what was for dinner & tea.  One day we 
asked him “What’s for dinner Italiano?” & he tried to make us understand.  
Somebody suggested a cabbage. He said, “No, the foot of the cabbage”

An English Sergeant often came from the camp to see us & he brought packets 
of tea or cocoa and a few biscuits for us.

There was a large German Aerodrome close to the hospitals and the Germans 
used to practice flying & very often accidents happened and they would bring 
the wounded men to the hospital. Some of these men died, and then, of course, 
there was a funeral.  We always looked forward to that day as a band always 
played.  The first time they played each time was something like this (German 
National Anthem). They would then play the Dead March like so :-------

I was for six months in this hospital, when we were sent to the camp.  The 
first day I landed in the camp I was put under arrest and had to do three 
days in a dark cell. I did not know what I had done.....................