A SKIPPER'S TALE 



one Russian and one Frenchman, to keep you by 



arself, so that you should not have your own 

 countryman to talk to. 



" Some of the prisoners used to have to go to work 

 trench digging, pulling roots of trees out of the 

 ground, and so on. T did the root-pulling, but I 

 got nothing whatever for it. We used to drip in the 

 warm weather. All our food was drink, drink, 

 drink. There was no stayable food all the time I 

 was there, and if it had not been for the help from 

 good friends in England we should certainly have 

 starved altogether. 



" We used to have to form up in the morning, 

 and if vou did not keep exactly straight in line you 

 got punished. They would make you run round a 

 pole with half a dozen bricks on your back, or dig 

 the ground with a shovel, with the same burden. 

 And they used to go through a form of inspection 

 with v< a, forcing you to be stark naked, no matter 

 it the weather was like. 



" We were driven about like sheep, and for the 

 first five months of our imprisonment we were not 

 allowed to write or receive letters, and when at last 

 we were given liberty to write home the Germans 

 either destroyed the letters or would not let them 

 This meant that your people at home were in 

 an agony of doubt all the time as to what had hap- 

 pened to you, and did not know whether you were 

 alive or dead. 



" After a whole year of this sort of suffering at 

 inelager I was transferred, with other fishermen, 



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