We all got in early that day, but most of us decided we would not try the “sick parade” again.

This was in the month of January, which is the rainy season, and there was every excuse for the boys’ not wanting to work—­besides the big reason for not wanting to help the Germans.

One night, when some of our fellows came in from work, cold, wet, and tired, and were about to attack their supper of black bread and soup, the mail came in, and one of the boys from Toronto got a letter from a young lady there who had been out on the Kingston Road to see an Internment Camp.  He let me read the letter.  She had gone out one beautiful July day, she said, and found the men having their evening meal under the beeches, and they did so enjoy their strawberries and ice-cream; and they had such lovely gardens, she said, and enough vegetables in them to provide for the winter.  The conclusion of the letter is where the real sting came:  “I am so glad, dear Bert, that you are safe in Germany out of the smoke and roar and dirt of the trenches.  It has made me feel so satisfied about you, to see these prisoners.  I was worrying a little about you before I saw them.  But now I won’t worry a bit.  I am glad to see prisoners can be so happy.  I will just hope you are as well cared for as they are....  Daddy and Mother were simply wild about Germany when they were there two years before the war.  They say the German ways are so quaint and the children have such pretty manners, and I am afraid you will be awfully hard to please when you come back, for Daddy and Mother were crazy about German cooking.”

I handed the letter back, and Bert and I looked at each other.  He rolled his eyes around the crowded room, where five hundred men were herded together.  Two smoking stoves, burning their miserable peat, made all the heat there was.  The double row of berths lined the walls.  Outside, the rain and sleet fell dismally.  Bert had a bowl of prison soup before him, and a hunk of bread, black and heavy.  He was hungry, wet, tired, and dirty, but all he said was, “Lord!  What do they understand?”

* * *

Every day we devised new ways of avoiding going to work.  “Nix arbide” (no work) was our motto.  The Russians, however, never joined us in any of our plans, neither did they take any part in the fun.  They were poor, melancholy fellows, docile and broken in spirit, and the guards were much harsher with them than with us, which was very unjust, and we resented it.

We noticed, too, that among our own fellows those who would work were made to work, while the “lion-tamer” and his husky followers lay in bed unmolested.  His latest excuse was that the doctor told him to lie in bed a month—­for he had a floating kidney.  Of course the doctor had not said anything of the kind, but he bluffed it out.

One morning when the guards were at their difficult task of making up a working party, they reported that they were twenty-five men short.  Every one had been at roll-call the night before, the guards were on duty, no one could have got away.  Wild excitement reigned.  Nobody knew what had happened to them.  After diligent searching they were found—­rolled up in their mattresses.