he supreme degree, but our endurance as well. The stench
was suffocating and nauseating. Even the foul aroma of the strong cheap
German tobacco which we were able to purchase at the canteen and to
smoke while at this task, if our sentry were genial, failed to smother
the more powerful and penetrating foul vapours which arose directly
water was applied.

We were also assigned to the repugnant duty of cleaning out the
latrines, which were of the most primitive character, and which
coincided with the facilities which one might anticipate among savages
but not in such a boasting civilised country as Germany. Both these
duties were loathsome, but I am afraid no one engaged on the tasks would
be able to express a conclusive opinion as to which was the worse.

The duties being so varied, operations often took us a little way from
the camp. The chance to get away even for a brief period from our
depressing and monotonous surroundings was seized with avidity.
Unfortunately, we feared that this system of forced labour would
culminate in our being assigned to the work of tending the crops. But we
made up our minds irrevocably to do no such thing no matter how we might
be punished. The Germans had failed to nourish us in an adequate manner,
and we were certainly not going to enable them to secure a sufficiency
of food at our expense. Indeed, the one or two attempts which were made
to impress us to toil on the land, proved highly disastrous because
considerable damage was inflicted from our ignorance of agriculture and
gardening.

Some of us were given the garden which belonged to the old General who
had been in charge at Sennelager when we first arrived, to keep in
condition. This official was an enthusiastic amateur gardener and
cherished a great love for flowers. Seeing that during his regime we had
received considerate treatment within limitations, we cherished no
grudge against him. Again, the fact that his garden was to be kept going
led us to hope that the duration of Major Bach's reign over us was
merely temporary and that our former guardian would soon be returning.
We knew that in such an event our lot would be rendered far easier, so
we nursed his little plot of ground with every care and displayed just
as much interest in its welfare as if it had been our own. But the old
General never came back to Sennelager, at least not during my period of
imprisonment there.

There was one party of British prisoners whom Major Ba