After lying upon this bare straw for three months we were given some coarse sacking and were peremptorily ordered to fill these bags with the straw.  This task gave the sand and dust a spirited opportunity to penetrate our systems.  Had a stranger outside the building heard our violent coughing he would have been pardoned had he construed our loft to be a hospital for consumptives.

We had been lying for quite six months upon this straw when we were suddenly paraded to receive the order to re-appear a quarter of an hour later with our beds.  Re-parading we were commanded to empty the sacks to form a big pile, and it was a repulsive-looking accumulation.  But we observed this straw was collected and carted away very carefully, although at the time we paid little attention to the incident.

Naturally we concluded that we were to be given a supply of new straw, and not before it was wanted.  But we were not to be treated as milksops.  We were marched off to the railway station where there was a quantity of wooden shavings which we were told to pack into our sacks.  When we attacked the bundles we recoiled in horror.  The material was reeking wet.  The authorities might just as well have served us with soddened sponges.

What could be done?  Visions of rheumatic fever and various other racking maladies arising from sleeping upon a wet bed haunted us.  However, the day being fine we rapidly strewed the bedding material out in the hope that the sun would dry it somewhat.  This precaution, however, was only partially successful.  Our couches were damp that night.

We thought no more about the straw which we had been compelled to exchange for the shavings until we learned that a German newspaper was shrieking with wild enthusiasm about Teuton resourcefulness and science having scored another scintillating economic triumph.  According to this newspaper an illustrious professor had discovered that straw possessed decidedly valuable nourishing qualities essential to human life, and that it was to be ground up and to enter into the constitution of the bread, which accordingly was now to be composed of at least three constituents—­wheat-meal, potato flour, and straw.  Some of us began to ponder long and hard over the straw which had so suddenly been taken away from us, especially myself, as I had experienced so many of the weird tactics which are pursued by the Germans in their vain efforts to maintain their game of bluff.

I asked every member of our party, in the event of discovering a foreign article in his bread, to hand it over to me because I had decided to become a collecting fiend of an unusual type.  Contributions were speedily forthcoming, and they ranged over pieces of dirty straw, three to four inches in length, fragments of coke, pieces of tree-bark, and odds and ends of every description—­in fact just the extraneous substances which penetrated into our loft with the mud clinging to our boots and which, of course, became associated with the loose straw.  I cherished this collection, which by the time I secured my release had assumed somewhat impressive proportions.  I left these relics in safe keeping near the border, and they will come into my hands upon the conclusion of the war if not before.