BRUTAL TREATMENT.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 124, 26 May 1916, Page 2

BRUTAL TREATMENT.

PRISONERS OF THE GENTLE GERMAN. AUCKLAND, May 22. A tragic story of the treatment suffered by British officers captured by Germans was told by Captain W. Gcrdon Barker, of the Connaught Rangers, who arrived by the Remuera frcm England on sick leave. He is visiting the Dominion in the hope that he will recover his health, which was shattered by his experiences in the prison camps. He wag so gravely affected by his terrible experiences that he was unable to discuss them, and he supplied seme written notes. He explained that he had intended not to disclose anything of. his experiences, but he was induced by a well«known New Zealander who returned by the Remuera to tell his story for Its value iu stimulating recruiting. Captain E'arker was wounded in the , ■ retreat from Mons to Le Catteau. He | wa s left behind at the latter place | with 50 men to hold a bridge. Their ammunition became exhausted, and they went in with the bayonet. The little force was almost wiped out. Captain Barker and the other wounded men were taken by the Germans, and left in the open rain all night. "I was put in a filthy horse-truck with 30 wounded French, and travelled three days and nights across Belgium and Germany. For two days they absolutely refused to give us food—we were called 'damned English pigs'— and the Red Cross was as bad. At every station people hooted and spat at me, and at one place they wanted to lynch me. When I arrived in Germany I was locked up in a common cell in an ordinary prison for a week, and after that was sent to hospital, then to Halle Camp, where I spent six months with 800 Russian, French, Belgian, and British officers, who were all crowded into a filthy iron foundry. The sanitary arrangements were awful and the food shocking. 'We were constantly subjected to every indignity, stripped naked and searched. German officers vied with each other in being offensive, and, as the American Ambassador said, treated us more like criminals than officers." Captain Barker finally became so ill that an exchange was arranged, though his release was delayed for [three months. He leaves for Rotorua I to-day.