e helped.

While waiting for the Board, I was sent to the German Prison Camp
at Winnal Downs as corporal of the permanent guard. I began to fear
that at last they had found something that I could do without
damaging anything, and my visions of the U.S.A. went a-glimmering.
I was with the Fritzies for over a week, and they certainly have it
soft and cushy.

They have as good food as the Tommies. They are paid ninepence a
day, and the work they do is a joke. They are well housed and kept
clean and have their own canteens, where they can buy almost
anything in the way of delicacies. They are decently treated by the
English soldiers, who even buy them fags out of their own money.
The nearest thing I ever saw to humiliation of a German was a few
good-natured jokes at their expense by some of the wits in the
guard. The English know how to play fair with an enemy when they
have him down.

I had about given up hope of ever getting out of the army when I
was summoned to appear before the Travelling Medical Board. You can
wager I lost no time in appearing.

The board looked me over with a discouraging and cynical suspicion.
I certainly did look as rugged as a navvy. When they gave me a
going over, they found that my heart was out of place and that my
left hand might never limber up again. They voted for a discharge
in jig time. I had all I could do to keep from howling with joy.

It was some weeks before the final formalities were closed up. The
pension board passed on my case, and I was given the magnificent
sum of sixteen shillings and sixpence a week, or $3.75. I spent the
next few weeks in visiting my friends and, eventually, at the 22nd
Headquarters at Bermondsey, London, S.C., received the papers that
once more made me a free man.

The papers read in part, "He is discharged in consequence of
paragraph 392, King's Rules and Regulations. No longer fit for
service." In another part of the book you will find a reproduction
of the character discharge also given. The discharged man also
receives a little silver badge bearing the inscription, "For King
and Empire, Services Rendered." I think that I value this badge
more than any other possession.

Once free, I lost no time in getting my passport into shape and
engaged a passage on the _St. Paul_, to sail on the second of June.
Since my discharge is dated the twenty-eighth of May, you can see
that I didn't waste any time. My friends at Southall thought I was
doing things