Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXV. Home to Trälleborg
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
HOME TO TRALLEBORG 383
satisfied with the treatment they received. " Oh yes, nitchevo,"
was the answer. But one of them shouted, "It is too
cold to He on the ground in late autumn." " Yes," I
answered, " of course it was warmer in the firing lines in
Poland. How would you like to go back and warm your-
selves a bit ? " " No, Heaven preserve us !
" came as a
chorus on every side.
My old friend Tommy Atkins was strolling about inside the
barbed-wire fence and looked and felt very bored. But he was
not ill-treated, on the contrary, he was very well looked after.
I saw him at dinner with his ally Ivan Ivanovitch. The
8500 prisoners were fed in three-quarters of an hour, and the
whole thing was despatched with the utmost smoothness. In
front of the kitchen building, in which gigantic caldrons were
steaming, railings had been put up, permitting the men to
advance in files of eight to the window opening, through which
the mess cooks with the adroitness, touch and quickness of a
virtuoso filled to the brim the bowls held out to them with
wholesome, nourishing, steaming soup. When their bowls
had been filled, the men went back another way so as to avoid
congestion. The system is the same as at the booking offices
at busy railway stations.
The British soldier is, under normal conditions, a sinewy and
well-knit man, who has hardened and trained his body with
football, tennis, cricket and other salutary exercises. But in
Germany he merely vegetates and swells in bulk and by no
means over-exerts himself over the work offered him in con-
finement, by which he can earn a couple of pfennigs a day for
tobacco. If therefore on his return home Tommy tries to
make out that he has been living " below starvation mark "
in Germany, his comfortably rounded form and his eloquencia
corporis will give him the lie !
It is surprising and peculiar to see Tommy Atkins and Ivan
Ivanovitch arm-in-arm—figuratively speaking, of course !
For in the concentration camps they hate one another heartily.
Tommy regards Ivan as a lousy savage and Ivan looks on
Tommy as an impudent upstart whom the modest patron of
the samovar ought not to associate with. And yet, for all
practical purposes, they march arm-in-arm and use all the
most hellish infernal machines of modern militarism to destroy
the German militarism and free the earth from the Germanic
barbarians. Great Britain and Russia ! It really staggers the
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
