The authorities cannot be credited with being liberal in assigning us space.  The roof rafters were spaced 10 feet apart and between each two of these five men had to shake down their beds.  Thus each was given a space 2 feet in width by 6 feet in length in which to make himself at home and to stow his belongings.  The quarters were so cramped that to dress and undress it was necessary to stand in the centre of the gangway which ran down the middle of the loft.  Once in bed it was almost impossible to turn over.  To make matters worse the roof was far from being watertight and when a heavy shower swept over us the water would trickle and drip through, while the slits in the wall allowed the wind to whistle and rush into the loft with ear-cutting force.

When we entered into possession the floor was perfectly bare, but we were given a miserable allowance of trusses of straw, each of which was divided up sparingly between so many men.  This we threw loosely upon the floor to form a couch, but the allowance was so inadequate that no man could keep himself warm, because the cold from the stone drove through the thin covering, while it was quite out of the question to find comfort.

Only a few blankets were served out.  I, myself, made eighteen distinct applications for one, but was denied the luxury, if such it can be called, until eleven months after my arrival at the camp.  Had it not been for the generosity of K——­, who freely gave me one of his blankets, coupled with one or two overcoats which I secured as a result of my trading operations in the camp, to which I refer later, I should have been compelled to face the bone-piercing, marrow-congealing wintry weather without the slightest covering beyond the clothes in which I stood.  Those who, unlike me, were lacking a liberal friend, lay shivering, depending purely upon the warmth radiating from one another’s bodies as they laid huddled in rows.

We protested against this lack of blankets to the United States Ambassador, time after time, but it was of little avail.  The authorities persisted in their statements that a blanket had been served out to every man.  In fact it was asserted in the British papers, as a result of the Ambassador’s investigations, that each man had been served with two blankets.  But for every man who did possess two blankets there were three prisoners who had not one!  The authorities endeavoured to shuffle the responsibility for being without blankets upon the prisoners themselves, unblushingly stating that they had been careless in looking after them, had lost them, or had been so lax as to let them be stolen.  If the Ambassador had only gone to the trouble to make a complete and personal canvass he would have probed the matter to the bottom.  If a parade with blankets had been called, the German Government would have been fairly trapped in its deliberate lying.