A SKIPPER'S TALE 



of men were crowded together, foreigners and 

 British — far different from the way prisoners of war 

 are treated in England. 



" Our being at Sennelager was a great time for 

 the inhabitants, especially on the Sundays, when 

 the}' would come — Boy Scouts amongst them — and 

 push up to the barbed wire fences and tease and 

 torment us and do all manner of things. 



' As time went on we got so that we had no 

 clothing, and no soap, and no means of washing our 

 underclothing. Some of the men ' washed ' their 

 shirts by scrubbing them with sand. I tried one 

 day, when it was bitterly cold weather, to ' scrub ' 

 my shirt by rubbing it on a bit of a wooden platform 

 we had in the grounds, and it froze so hard to the 

 woodwork that, I could not get it off. 



For the first five or six months we had a cat- 

 and-dog life. The Germans used to hustle us about, 

 kick us, give us a crack with the butt-end of a gun 

 or a prod with a bayonet, and when they were tired 

 of that they would set a big savage dog on to us, 

 a German brute, to hurry us up. The dog used to 

 help the guard when we were hustled along the 

 roadway to the canteen, about half a mile away, to 

 get our dinners. The dog was a sort of man-hunter, 

 and would go for anything. The brute was on a 

 chain, which was held by a soldier, who let him out 

 a certain length ; but at times the soldier would slip 

 the chain, so that the dog could fly at a helpless 

 man. 



' I saw one of our fishermen cruelly torn in the 



G7 



