So, when my German captors took me down and with a lot of ceremony, deposited me in the camp calaboose, a hasty examination of the barred windows and the tremendous lock on the door almost convinced me that my only hope was to experiment with that philosophy of price, as my biggest asset happened to be a pocket full of prison money, which, if acceptable at all, would have to be disposed of at a discount. At any rate, I was determined to get out—the means might require bribery and it might require lies. Whatever was necessary to effect my state of freedom, so long as it was honorable, was in my mind the privilege of the prisoner—for it was fair in war. The cell was not so bad; in fact, it was much better than the quarters I had in camp, except that I was alone. I had a German orderly who took care of me, which convenience was something foreign in the regular camp. First appearances were so attractive that I thought it unfortunate I hadn’t discovered it before. In the morning the interpreter came around to see how things were going along. I told him “Fine, except that I wanted something to eat,” an habitual complaint among prisoners. There was the rub, for he informed me that when in solitary imprisonment in jail you only receive a portion of German food and that under no circumstances are you allowed any supplemental food from the Red Cross. So, about nine o’clock this orderly brought me my breakfast which consisted of a bowl of Ersatz coffee and that was all. Believe me, the scarcity left a funny empty feeling in my stomach that decided the question at once—bribery it would be. In the afternoon, when one of the calaboose corporals came around on his hourly inspection, I figured that he was a pretty good guy to play up to, so I knocked the old boy sick by offering him a pipeful of my real, American tobacco, which had been given me by a fellow prisoner, Lieutenant Shea of the 26th Division, who handled the Red Cross supplies at Karlsruhe. Shea was a real guy; he was fearless and while under very strict German regulations, he always allowed his staunch Americanism to be seen by Germans and Americans indiscriminately. This German Corporal had a whopper of a pipe for he made a big hole in my already slim sack and tobacco was as scarce as desert icebergs. How his eyes sparkled when he lighted it. These Germans had been smoking ground cabbage leaves for almost four years and were getting mighty tired of it. “Sehr gut, sehr gut,” he ejaculated many times, sniffing the old time aroma.