ard of Merit" move.

We were awakened at a very early hour and were started off to the
station, loaded with stuff. We had blankets, wash-basin, empty
mattress, and wooden clogs. The boys did not take kindly to the
wooden clogs, and under cover of the darkness--for it was long before
daylight--they threw them away. The road to the station the next
morning must have looked as if a royal wedding party had gone by.

This time we were glad to be able to see where we were going,
although it was a dismal, barren country we travelled through,
with many patches of heather moor and marsh. The settlements were
scattered and the buildings poor. But even if we did not think much
of the country, we liked the direction, for it was northwest, and
was bringing us nearer Holland.

At Bremen, the second largest seaport in Germany, we stayed a couple
of hours, but were not let out of our car, so saw nothing of the
city.

At about four o'clock in the afternoon, we arrived in Oldenburg, and
began our eight-mile march to Vehnemoor Camp, which is one of the
Cellelager group and known as Cellelager VI. We were glad to dispose
of our packs by loading them on a canal-boat, which we pulled along
by ropes, and we arrived at the camp late in the evening.

This camp had but a few prisoners in it when we came, but there were
nearly four hundred of us, and we filled it to overflowing. There
were three tiers of bunks where the roof was high enough to admit
of it, and that first night we were there we slept on our empty
mattresses. However, we still had our Red Cross blanket and the two
German blankets apiece, and we managed to keep warm. There were two
rooms with two peat stoves in each room.

The camp was built beside a peat bog, on ground from which the peat
had been removed, and there was no paving of any kind around it. One
step from the door brought us to the raw mud, and the dirt inside the
camp was indescribable. There were no books or papers; the canteen
sold nothing but matches, notepaper, and something that tasted
remotely like buckwheat honey.

The first morning the Commandant addressed us, through an
interpreter. He told us he had heard about us. There was dead
silence at that; we were pretty sure we knew what he had heard. Then
he told us that some of us had refused to work and some had tried
to escape; he was grieved to hear these things! He hoped they would
not happen again. It was foolish to act this way, and would meet
with pu