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One of Major Bach’s most diabolical acts of savagery was the closing of the canteens in the camp to prisoners.  This was the last straw, because now we were compelled to subsist upon the slender and disgusting fare served from the official cook-house.  This doubtless was the express reason which influenced the Commandant in his action.  But we were not disposed to allow him to have things all his own way.  He promulgated the order but it had to be enforced by his myrmidons.  We found that the canteen was still available to the guards, so forthwith we resorted to corruption to evade Major Bach’s decree.  The guards having us in their mercy, bled us unmercifully, the most trivial articles being procurable only at an extravagant price.  I paid a shilling for a loaf which I could always obtain before the closing order came into force for twopence!  Other articles were in proportion.

But closing the canteens drew the cordon round our stomachs immeasurably tighter.  It was not long before the fiendish decree betrayed its fruits.  Gaunt figures with pinched faces and staring wolfish eyes slunk about the camp ready to seize anything in the form of food.  Our physique fell away, and those already reduced to weakness suffered still further debilitation.  Many failed to muster the strength necessary to fulfil the tasks allotted to them.  Gradual, systematic and deliberate starvation of the prisoners was prosecuted in grim earnest.

Yet the British prisoners accepted the inevitable with a far more cheerful resignation than the others.  Undoubtedly it is a decided trait of the British character never to be cast down when brought face to face with disaster.  Our boys were quite as resourceful as Major Bach, although in the opposite direction—­to keep ourselves alive.  Whenever any of us went out and came within reach of a field growing vegetable crops we did not hesitate to raid it.  Supplies of raw carrots, onions, potatoes, turnips and any other roots in the edible line were smuggled into the barracks.  Late at night, after all lights had been extinguished and we were supposed to be asleep, we were sitting up munching quietly away at these spoils of war with as much gusto and enthusiasm as if enjoying a table d’hote dinner in the luxury of a crack West End hotel.

One day one of our party came in with a cucumber.  Where or how he had got it we never knew, and what is more we did not trouble to enquire.  The fact that we had come into possession of a dainty sufficed.  We fell upon it with a relish which it is impossible to describe.  It was divided among us in accordance with our accepted communal practice, and I do not think any article which we secured in Sennelager was ever eaten with such wholehearted enjoyment as that cucumber.  But the incident was not free from its touch of pathos.  When we sat down to the cucumber we carefully peeled it and threw the rind away.  Two days later two others and myself set out to recover that cucumber rind which had been discarded, the pinch about the waist-belt having become insistent.  We found it, soiled and shrivelled, but we ate it ravenously.