AMMANFORDIAN WAR PRISONERS IN GERMANY.

HUNGER AND HARDSHIP

News has recently come through in a roundabout way of the condition of any Ammanford man who has been a prisoner of war in Germany for many months, viz., Private W. Harkle, 5569. 1 st Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Harkle, who had previously served six years and some months in India, Aden, and Malta, and was discharged, an invalid from fever, rejoined his old regiment on the outbreak of the war. He went through the earlier engagements in France, and was captured near Ypes during the retreat from Mons.

Later news came through a smuggled letter sent to a Llanelly man by a released Frenchman, that Harkle had received a severe injury to one of his eyes, by being struck with bayonet by a bullying German officer to whom he had made a spirited retort.

He has frequently written home to his wife, his chief cry being for food, of which he and the other prisoners were kept very short. A few days ago she received two letters from him, smuggled through by being made into the shape of cigarettes. He states it is very warm out there, and asks for slippers, football kickers, and food.

Mrs. Harkle has written to the War Office for information as to the possibility of her husband being released, but has been notified that they cannot interfere; it all rests with the medical authorities on the other side. Harkle has just had his 40 th birthday in Germany.

Mrs. Harkle recently received news of her husband from an unexpected quarter, viz., from a Mr. Thomas Driver, of Sale, Cheshire, who found her name in the diary of a relative, Private Wm. Shergold, R.A.M.C., now returned from Germany and recuperating from the effects of his long imprisonment.

He writes : — “He managed to smuggle home about 20 letters, but in your case only has your name, &c., in his diary, which I got him to endorse, viz., ‘Receiving all parcels; eye just the same.' He was asking for a shade for his eye, but up to my leaving him a fortnight ago had not received it, as the Germans would not give the English any (it is his left eye); otherwise he might have got home. He worried a lot, and I have attended him since he was wounded. Been through about four operation.

Their treatment has been a little better this last two or three months, but far from satisfactory, and they are only kept alive with foodstuffs from home. All parcels are arriving prompt, and they mostly ask for home made bread, cake with the balm, lard and currants in, as this keeps fairly well, tea, coffee or cocoa, sugar, milk, treacle, dripping, biscuits, gingerbread or oatmeal, health salts, common salt, soap, &c. (as fits the sender's pocket). Rest assured he is quite well under the circumstances, and I join in your sorrow at the report my relative makes.

“P.S. — I should like his regimental number and camp in Germany, as I should like to make an appeal through the Press, as the charity is too one sided altogether. The soldiers cannot send out an appeal, and rarely a letter or post card for home, which causes anxiety; but rest assured America is looking after them.”

The Private Shergold above referred to has given a graphic account to an English newspaper of the treatment of English prisoners of war by the Germans. He states that after capture, a fortnight elapsed before they were en route for Germany. At Brussels they were placed in a siding which had recently been occupied by horses, and at midnight an officer came round an said if they valued their lives they must remain quiet. They then marched them across the city to another station. On the way he was kicked by some Germans.

“Our next experience, “he goes on,” of the brutality of the Germans was at Liege. We were in cattle trucks with very little ventilation, and at the station the German soldiers wanted to have a look at the English prisoners. Our guard refused to open the door, and some of them put their shoulders to the buffers and tried to upset the wagon. The men were calling us ‘English dogs,' those who could speak English, and bricks and stones were thrown at us. We were in the railway trucks for five days, and the only food they got us was some bread that the guard had been able to steal from a passing train.”

At the stations, German nurses refused to give them water, and when marching to a camp at Munster, a German lancer swung his lance and struck him on the back of the head. There was a guard of twelve for 23 English prisoners, in a compound enclosed with electrified wire.

Their accommodation was four poles and a piece of tarpaulin, with which they had to make a tent, and some wet straw to lie on. They were treated with studied neglect, and when craving for water in very hot weather, the Germans in charge of the water carts said, “Nix for Englishmen.”

They were put to work in stables to earn a slice of bread, and the only wash they had form the time they left the battlefield to leaving this camp, six weeks after, war once when it rained, and they caught the water in their tarpaulin sheet.

Twenty-three of them had a wash with that rain water.

In the new camp on the other side of Munster, 140 men were placed in each hut, which had been constructed by prisoners of war. Their food consisted of horse beans, cabbage water, chestnuts, rice water, ground maize in the form of porridge and black bream the daily allowance of black bread being so small that it was generally devoured at the first opportunity.

It is the people at home who are keeping the British soldiers alive in the German camps. When their uniforms wore out they were given coats with a bright yellow patch, three inches wide in the back, so that they could be distinguished, and trousers with a yellow stripe, while wooden clogs replaced their boots.

The English had a mouth-organ band, and were always singing “Tipperary.” Many of them had been put to work in the German coal mines. He advises parents and friends to send as much food as possible. Bread should be packed in wooden boxes; if it is put in tins it becomes mouldy. Butter might be placed in tins. “Of course, ”concludes Private Shergold,” the men share the food on with another. No Englishman will see another starve.”