The Memoirs of a Swine in the Land of Kultur

Synopsis

A prisoner of war camp had many characteristics in common with other communities of human beings. It had its social classes, its great and its humble citizens, its rich and its poor. In arriving in camp I was fortunate enough to meet a friend, a Frenchman, with three years service in captivity and an ample stock of provisions. He “adopted” me. The fate of my eight hundred comrades, however, was pitiful. Finding practically nothing in the Help Committee’s stores and being as yet without help from England, they were forced to subsist on the German ration which was scarcely enough to keep a man on his feet. The usual results of hunger set in, and I saw these poor fellows sink into shabby, hungry, begging wanderers about the camp.

My friend M—— was one of the most important men in the camp. He was intimate with all the bureau clerks, Unteroffiziere, interpreters, “good” sentries, and other persons worth knowing. He lived with three French sous-officers in a comfortably furnished or “fixed up” Kleines Zimmer. They had everything that friends could send them in parcels, and wanted for nothing but liberty and—happiness.

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