We had now made up our minds that Stralsund, one of the rumoured destinations, was to be our new "home." Great was our surprise when we found that our train had stopped at a small town called Schwarmstedt, in Hanover, and that our new camp was some eight miles from there. The guards got out and formed a close cordon completely round the train and we were told that we were not to be marched off till daybreak. The German soldiers from our carriage not employed on this cordon duty fetched us water at our request and we settled down to sleep for a few hours until the time for moving came. We were turned out of the train at 3 a.m. and after being formed up in fours we waited for an hour or so. We had a grand opportunity of studying the Prussian method of enforcing obedience and smartness in the men during this wait. A captain and a sergeant-major kind of man, fairly screamed at the privates. On several occasions, livid with rage, one or other of them rushed at some hapless wretch and roared at him in sentences containing very choice German words--hardly of the endearment variety. Our carriage guards had previously told us that the major, captain and sergeant-major were "Schweine" of the worst type, but that the lieutenant was liked well enough. We could now judge for ourselves. At last we got the order to move off, our hand baggage being left behind to be brought up by a miniature railway train especially constructed for the purpose of supplying the prison camps. The camp with several others, as we found out afterwards, was situated on the Lueneburg Heide, some eight miles east-north-east of the town of Schwarmstedt and five or six miles on the Berlin side of the river Aller. Crossing the river and leaving the valley through which it flowed, we quickly entered a wild tract of country, through which the only road was a rough cart track. The soil was peaty with a deep layer of sand and black dust on the top of it. For the first two or three miles we passed through several very fine pine forests interspersed with young plantations and rough scrub. This type of country gave way to a flat marshy-looking area covered with rank vegetation and stunted fir-trees. Streams and ditches cut up the land, and it struck one as being a very wet place even in the summer, in winter it would probably be a swamp. At last we reached the camp and found ourselves looking at a collection of wooden huts with tarred felt roofs, surrounded by a barbed wire fence, seemingly planted at random in the midst of the wildness. CHAPTER III SCHWARMSTEDT CAMP Our first sight of this camp hardly encouraged us to think that we were going to a better place than Crefeld. An ominous silence fell upon the incoming prisoners! And it was a particularly sulky lot who faced the new commandant when he had them formed up in front of him.