nct
applications for one, but was denied the luxury, if such it can be
called, until eleven months after my arrival at the camp. Had it not
been for the generosity of K----, who freely gave me one of his
blankets, coupled with one or two overcoats which I secured as a result
of my trading operations in the camp, to which I refer later, I should
have been compelled to face the bone-piercing, marrow-congealing wintry
weather without the slightest covering beyond the clothes in which I
stood. Those who, unlike me, were lacking a liberal friend, lay
shivering, depending purely upon the warmth radiating from one another's
bodies as they laid huddled in rows.

We protested against this lack of blankets to the United States
Ambassador, time after time, but it was of little avail. The authorities
persisted in their statements that a blanket had been served out to
every man. In fact it was asserted in the British papers, as a result of
the Ambassador's investigations, that each man had been served with two
blankets. But for every man who did possess two blankets there were
three prisoners who had not one! The authorities endeavoured to shuffle
the responsibility for being without blankets upon the prisoners
themselves, unblushingly stating that they had been careless in looking
after them, had lost them, or had been so lax as to let them be stolen.
If the Ambassador had only gone to the trouble to make a complete and
personal canvass he would have probed the matter to the bottom. If a
parade with blankets had been called, the German Government would have
been fairly trapped in its deliberate lying.

About ten months after I entered the camp, blankets were purchasable at
the camp stores. They cost us nine shillings apiece and they were not
our exclusive property. When a prisoner received his release he was not
permitted to take his blanket with him. Neither had it any surrender
value. It had to be left behind. If the prisoner could find a purchaser
for it he was at liberty to do so, but if no sale could be consummated
then it had to be presented to a comrade. The blanket was not allowed to
leave the camp because it contained a certain amount of wool!

The food supplied by the authorities did not vary very pronouncedly from
what I had received in other camps, but if anything it was a trifle
better, especially in the early days, when Germany was not feeling the
pinch of the British blockade. For breakfast there was the eternal ac