he mine
and are carried up on the men's clothes. Often these pests were so bad
that the men lay out in the yard at night instead of going to
bed--anyway, in the hot weather the stench from the beds is almost
unbearable.

We walked out among the prisoners, and they were glad to get news of
the war and of the outside world. Among other questions, they asked if
London was still standing. The Germans had told them it had been
levelled to the ground. Some of the men had been in the mines for two
years and the stories they told were almost incredible. The Germans
who guard this camp are always savage and cruel and they are urged on
by the owners and operators of the mine. We talked with some of the
first British prisoners who arrived there, and this is what they told
us: At first they refused to work, knowing that it was contrary to
international law to force prisoners of war to work in the mines. For
refusing to work they were given a week of the most brutal abuse and
torture possible. The weather was bitterly cold and there was a foot
of snow. These men were stripped of everything but their shirt and
pants and made to stand "at attention" out of doors. Any man moving
hand or foot was knocked down with the butt of a rifle, and those who
fainted from cold and exhaustion were dragged away and put back in
their places as soon as they became conscious--while those whose
strength enabled them to hold out the longest were stood in front of
the cokery ovens until they were utterly exhausted by the terrific
heat, and had to consent to work. The first shift that went down into
the mines were driven into the cage with rifle butts and bayonets, and
some of them went down unconscious. Oh, when this war is over, there
will be a long day of reckoning with the German people.

After listening to such stories as these, and after seeing the poor
wrecked bodies of the prisoners, you can imagine how we felt as we were
marched off to work the next morning. When we were taken out, we were
given our first suit of prison clothes--this consisted of overalls and
smock and cap. The overalls had a four-inch stripe of red down each
leg, the jacket had six inches of red down the centre of the back, and
the cap had a wide red band across the top. After we got into these,
we looked like a bunch of robins.

When we reached the pit-head we found a line of German civilians
waiting to go down into the mines--as we waited for the cages to come