one floor for another twenty-four
hours of waiting.

My thoughts dwelt greatly on food. We were supposed to receive soup
every fourth day, but we did not. The prisoners of other nationalities
did, and in addition were exercised regularly. At least we could hear
the rattle of their spoons against their bowls and the tramp of their
feet. The slow starving was, to my mind, the worst. And after that the
loss of sleep. If one did drop off, the cold soon caused a miserable
awakening. I tried not to think, and did all the gymnastic drill I
knew, even to standing on my hands in the darkness of the cell. I knew
that if I gave up it would be all off, for I could daily feel myself
getting wabbly as the confinement and starvation, added to my already
enfeebled and starved condition when I entered, began to tell on me.
It must be borne in mind that I had already served eleven days'
solitary confinement on insufficient food, after several days of jail
on ditto, and eight days while escaping, during which I had been
continually wet and without food, other than the two biscuits daily,
before beginning to serve this sentence. Simmons, of course, was in
the same plight.

The last day, that of February 22nd, rolled around finally. We were
taken from our cells at nine o'clock and marched out for an unknown
destination which we knew only as a stronger punishment camp than the
others we had been in. Ahead of us we saw poor Brumley; but were
unable to communicate with him, and I do not know whether he saw us or
not. That was all we ever learned directly of his fate. His wife, in
Toronto, has since informed me that he is still in Germany and has
only lately been recaptured after another attempt at escape.

At eleven that night we arrived at our destination. This was the
strong punishment camp of Parniewinkel, in Hanover, on the road over
which Napoleon had marched to his doom at Moscow. We wondered if we,
too, were going to ours.

We had had no food that day, nor did we get any that night, but were
shoved into a hut full of Russians, who did not know what to make of
us. We were so long of hair and beard, so ragged, so emaciated and so
altogether filthy that they must have thought us anything but British
soldiers.

Later we found that there were, in all, between four and five hundred
Russian, eighty French and Belgian, and, including ourselves, eleven
British prisoners, of whom Simmons and I were the only Canadians, all
shoved into two h