I could not sleep at all that night, for the air was stifling, and somebody’s arm or foot or head was always bumping into me.  I wonder if Robinson Crusoe ever remembered to be thankful for fresh air and room to stretch himself!  We asked the guards for water, for we soon grew very thirsty, and when we stopped at a station, one of the boys, looking out, saw the guard coming with a pail of water, and cried out, “Here’s water—­boys!” The thought of a drink put new life in us, and we scrambled to our feet.  It was water, all right, and plenty of it, but it was boiling hot and we could not drink it; and we could not tell from the look of opaque stupidity on the face of the guard whether he did it intentionally or not.  He may have been a boiling-water-before-meals advocate.  He looked balmy enough for anything!

[Illustration:  Officers’ Quarters in a German Military Prison]

At some of the stations the civilians standing on the platform filled our water-bottles for us, but it wasn’t enough.  We had only two water-bottles in the whole car.  However, at Cologne, a boy came quickly to the car window at our call, and filled our water-bottles from a tap, over and over again.  He would run as fast as he could from the tap to the window, and left a bottle filling at the tap while he made the trip.  In this way every man in the car got enough to drink, and this blue-eyed, shock-headed lad will ever live in grateful memory.

The following night after midnight we reached Giessen, and were unloaded and marched through dark streets to the prison-camp, which is on the outskirts of the city.  We were put into a dimly lighted hut, stale and foul-smelling, too, and when we put up the windows, some of our own Sergeants objected on account of the cold, and shut them down.  Well, at least we had room if we hadn’t air, and we huddled together and slept, trying to forget what we used to believe about the need of fresh air.

As soon as the morning came, I went outside and watched a dull red, angry sky flushing toward sunrise.  Red in the morning sky denotes wind, it is said, but we didn’t need signs that morning to proclaim a windy day, for the wind already swept the courtyard, and whipped the green branches of the handsome trees which marked the driveway.  My spirits rose at once when I filled my lungs with air and looked up at the scudding clouds which were being dogged across the sky by the wind.

A few straggling prisoners came out to wash at the tap in the courtyard, and I went over to join them, for I was grimy, too, with the long and horrible ride.  With one hand I could make but little progress, and was spreading the dirt rather than removing it, until a friendly Belgian, seeing my difficulty, took his cake of soap and his towel, and washed me well.

We were then given a ration of bread about two inches thick, and a drink of something that tasted like water boiled in a coffee-pot, and after this we were divided into ten groups.  Those of us who knew each other tried hard to stay together, but we soon learned to be careful not to appear to be too anxious, for the guards evidently had instructions to break up previous acquaintanceships.