ENEMY TREATMENT.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 17 August 1917, Page 1

ENEMY TREATMENT.

hven if he has come back minus a leg (says the 'Sydney Morning Herald'), Private "Sammy" Payne, formerly a miner, of Wallsend, has had the satisfaction of having,, crossed the Rhine. He is only 25 years of age, and is one of the first of the prisoners of war, if not the first, to return to his own country. His experience, although he related it only briefly, is an , endorsement of what many others have had to say of their treatment by the enemy. It was at Fleurbaix that he was so wounded in the ankhTas to be helpless. He was ordered not to try to move until the Red Gross picked him up, but a fewminutes afterwards he found himself in enemy hands. He was carried behind the German lines, and was afterwards entrained for Aachen, where he put in about' three months in hospital. "This place," he says, "is in Cologne, and what I saw of the latter centre is very pretty, although my view was naturally a verv circumscribed one. I had to view things as through glasses darkly, so "to speak, for I was not only m hospital, but I bad to submit to treatment and a diet with which J. was not satisfied." Private Payne pointed to Ins wooden leg. "They took my leg off right from above the knee." ha said, " although, in my opinion, the amputation need not have extended nearly that far, because I was wounded onlv at the ankle. I had certainly hoped to'save a bit of my leg. Furthermore, my limb was not dressed and properly attended to for about 11 days after the amputation. As for the food, it was pretty bad, especially in view of the circumstances. .1 was not a prisoner of war sound in limb;- 1 was in hospital. The food consisted of black' bread and coffee, and occasionally soup—, watery idnd of stuff. 'Sometimes potatoes came my way, and one day a week I was treated to a pancake. Generally it was poor treatment, and it'was not with am-i-egret that I left the place. In striking contrast was the treatment both in Holland and in Epgland."