World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, Canadian
These parcels mean life and a small degree of comfort to the boys, so
you can imagine how they are looked forward to. The Red Cross saved my
life and the lives of thousands of our boys; and they deserve honour
and support from every person who calls himself a loyal citizen of any
Allied country. I shall never forget when my first parcel came; I had
been in camp two months and I had failed eighteen pounds. One of the
boys came into my hut and told me there were two parcels for me. I
told him to stop fooling, that his joke was stale. But he said, "No,
it's straight goods this time, here are the tickets"--so I rushed off
to where the parcel office was and got in line. Pretty soon my turn
came and I handed in my tickets. A big German brought out the parcels,
and while he was censoring them I was figuring on what I was going to
have to eat, but imagine my disappointment when he pushed over the
parcels and I found they contained nothing but clothing. There were
two suits of underwear, two pairs of socks, two shirts and one pair of
blankets, but no food. My clothing was in rags when I reached Germany,
my tunic and cap were lost in the sap the day I was taken, and I needed
socks and underwear very badly, also boots, so this supply was more
than welcome, but I needed food more than anything else. I put all the
stuff into the blankets and started back for the hut. When the boys
saw me coming, they rushed out to meet me, for they were building on a
feed, the same as myself. The unwritten rule of the prison camp is,
whatever one gets the rest all share it, so they were disappointed too.
However, three days later our food parcels arrived, having been delayed
at the border, and we sure had a big feed. My first food parcel
contained one tin of Welsh rarebit, one tin of jam, a large package of
biscuits, three bars of chocolate, and two packages of cigarettes. I
tell you it put new life into us, and we felt like licking all the Huns
in sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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