The prisoners spent most of their time at Osnabruck in playing tennis, football, walking up and down the yard, learning French or Russian, playing cards, or reading.
The books which prisoners receive from time to time from England are passed round, thus forming a sort of circulating library.
In living a life of this kind one cannot help but develop the habits of school-days, and become boyish in many things.
One lives for letters and parcels. It is not the length of letters or size of parcels which count so much as the number; and when the parcel list comes round, he is a lucky fellow who finds four or five parcels awaiting him, even though their total contents amount to no more than that of the man who receives a single parcel.
On Tuesdays and Fridays the number of parcels was an absorbing topic, and one would turn to another in schoolboy fashion, and say:
In each room the men throw their parcels into one mess, and share alike; and if a new prisoner arrives, who would not be receiving parcels, he shares with the others in his room.
If several prisoners just arriving are put in a room by themselves, they do not, of course, fare so well, and until their parcels arrive, many weeks later, they are more or less dependent upon the food issued to them; although presents of food are frequently sent in by the others, and articles of clothing are loaned.
The charge made to the prisoners for food was forty-five marks per month. We were afterwards informed that by a new regulation the charge, by some international arrangement, had to be reduced to thirty marks per month. And the commandant explained that for this sum he could only supply the same ration which the men received; but would continue to supply the old ration if the officers would voluntarily agree to continue paying forty-five marks, and extra for their bread--which, of course, they did.
This ration consisted of imitation coffee for breakfast and no food. A plate of washy stuff called soup, for dinner, followed by some sloppy mashed potatoes, and sometimes green stuff; and for supper, more sloppy potatoes.
To satisfy one's hunger on a cold day with such food--which is only fit for pigs--can only be done by loosening the waistcoat, and half an hour afterwards one feels as though he had never had a meal.