d winter. I got three meals a day.
Breakfast consisted of weak coffee and a slice of black bread with some
kind of lard spread on it. Dinner was herring bone or potato-peel soup, or
ham-bone soup with a slice of heavy potato bread. Supper was a repetition
of breakfast except that very often the lard was absent.

"There were two German patients who got the best of attention. I learned
though, that they were wounded in the act of deserting, and were to be
court-martialed upon recovery. After they were able to sit up they would
get a large jug of beer with their midday meal and this was a keen torture
to me.

"I became determined to find some way of communicating with my sweetheart
and friends at home, to let them know I was still alive. The night nurse
told me she expected to go near the firing line for duty, so I asked her
if she could try to smuggle out a letter for me so that it would reach my
friends. At first, she very positively refused, saying that should the
effort be found out, she would be instantly shot, but after I explained my
case to her and pleaded with her she brought me a pencil and note paper
and watched a chance when all was quiet. She put a screen round me and
whispered in my ear to praise the commandant, and the doctors, and write
in the brightest manner of everyone there. Thus, she said, the censor
might allow the letter to go through.

"While she watched the guards, I scribbled, doing all she told me to. I
described the place and commandant something in the following manner:

This is a most beautiful place. I think it's the prettiest hospital
in the great German Empire. It is even more elaborate than the
wonderful Peterhead sanatorium at home, and the commandant is the
nicest old gentleman. The staff, here, is also superior. We get the
best of food and plenty of it and all kinds of recreation. Even
visitors bring English magazines and treat me like a relative.

"After finishing it, I gave it to the nurse to read. I had written all the
sheet could contain. She looked it over and seemed very pleased with it
and said that it would pass the censor all right. She sealed it, then
affixed a stamp, and hid it away in her dress, promising to post it next
morning.

"I thought it was rather neat, my working in the Peterhead prison in
Aberdeenshire, as a sanatorium.

"After the nurse's departure, I slept peacefully and with an easy mind, as
if a great burden had been lifted