MARCHING BACKWARDS
4 ' ANOTHER RUN CRUELTY. A further batch of 370 prisoners arrived at Cannon Street Station yesterday, states the "Daily Mail" of November 27. .Daily the welcoming crowd grows larger. Only a very few of the men had ever been in Germany, most of them having been captured in Jlarch and made to work behind the lines, 1 "They made us write home and give a German address," said a man of the Royal Fusiliers-, "but. the address was'n code, so that if they thought fit to let us have anything that came from home they knew where we were to be found. While our. people believed we were in Rhineland we were' actually up close behind the fighting line. "One man who through weakness moved while on parade was made to stand at attention till he dropped. A bueket of water was thrown over him, and two hours later he was stretched out dead."'said another. !A Liverpool'lance-corporal in the Middlesex Regiment, who had been in a German prison camp, said: "We were taken to Germany in cattle trucks, about 50 men in a truck. Most of. them were suffering badly from dysentery. It 'took 49 hours to reach Minden, and all w.e had was que cup of water, one cup of acorn coffee, and a small slico of black hread. "In February I tried to escape, but was retaken and made to march backwards nearly s..miles. I was weak with fatigue and hunger—l had eaten nothing from the moment of my escape—but I had to keei) in front of a Prussian Guard all the way. If I went too fast I had to wait for lym, and when he caught me' up ,he kicked ■ me. If I went too slow he kicked me. I did not know the roa,d. and if I accidentally took the wrong turning he kicked me towards the right one, "When we arrived at the camp a German sentry and , the Prussian beat me with their rifles. One blow was so fierce that the rifle split on my anil." _ Four hundred old "Contemptibles" taken prisoner during the relreat from Mons arrived at Southampton recently, and' were welcomed by the Mayor and Mayoress. " •
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Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 109, 1 February 1919, Page 7
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368MARCHING BACKWARDS Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 109, 1 February 1919, Page 7
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