We were delighted to see no rings except what we had in our party.  The Commandant of the camp did not take any notice of them, so we were able to remove all traces of them from our new overcoats, and when Steve Le Blanc, from Ottawa, gave me a nice navy-blue civilian coat, I gave my ringed tunic to one of the boys, who forthwith passed himself off for a ring-man, to avoid being sent out to work.

I found, however, he only enjoyed a brief exemption, for his record, all written down and sent along with him, showed his character had been blameless and exemplary, and the rings on his coat could not save him.  It was “Raus in!” and “Raus out!” every day for him!  In this manner did his good deeds find him out.

There was a football ground at this camp, and a theatre for the prisoners to use, but in the week we were there I saw only one game of football.

At the end of a week we were moved again, most of us.  They did not, of course, tell us where we were going, but as they picked out all of us who had ever tried to escape—­and all those who had refused to work—­we were pretty sure it was not a “Reward of Merit” move.

We were awakened at a very early hour and were started off to the station, loaded with stuff.  We had blankets, wash-basin, empty mattress, and wooden clogs.  The boys did not take kindly to the wooden clogs, and under cover of the darkness—­for it was long before daylight—­they threw them away.  The road to the station the next morning must have looked as if a royal wedding party had gone by.

This time we were glad to be able to see where we were going, although it was a dismal, barren country we travelled through, with many patches of heather moor and marsh.  The settlements were scattered and the buildings poor.  But even if we did not think much of the country, we liked the direction, for it was northwest, and was bringing us nearer Holland.

At Bremen, the second largest seaport in Germany, we stayed a couple of hours, but were not let out of our car, so saw nothing of the city.

At about four o’clock in the afternoon, we arrived in Oldenburg, and began our eight-mile march to Vehnemoor Camp, which is one of the Cellelager group and known as Cellelager VI.  We were glad to dispose of our packs by loading them on a canal-boat, which we pulled along by ropes, and we arrived at the camp late in the evening.

This camp had but a few prisoners in it when we came, but there were nearly four hundred of us, and we filled it to overflowing.  There were three tiers of bunks where the roof was high enough to admit of it, and that first night we were there we slept on our empty mattresses.  However, we still had our Red Cross blanket and the two German blankets apiece, and we managed to keep warm.  There were two rooms with two peat stoves in each room.

The camp was built beside a peat bog, on ground from which the peat had been removed, and there was no paving of any kind around it.  One step from the door brought us to the raw mud, and the dirt inside the camp was indescribable.  There were no books or papers; the canteen sold nothing but matches, notepaper, and something that tasted remotely like buckwheat honey.