Every morning saw the same spectacle. When the interpreter arrived with the letters everything was abandoned and forgotten. The English officer was surrounded by a silent crowd of waiting people. Each one’s heart was filled with the burning wish to receive some token, some loving message from home. What joy when one’s hopes were fulfilled, how great the sorrow and disappointment when they were shattered. In the latter case, we always said: “One more day lost.” When, two months afterwards, I was back in Germany, and was asked on many sides what one could do to give pleasure to the prisoners, I always said: “Write, write as much as you can. What the prisoner longs for most are letters.” We lived in very close comradeship. In the evenings we sat in groups round the beautiful, large fireplaces, in which burned huge logs of wood. The conversation touched upon battles and victories, sorrow and death, and wild, adventurous happenings. We had many good books, and a string quartette as well as a choir added much to our entertainment. We played many a joke, and when we had had a jolly good laugh we felt relieved for a time from the terrible oppression which captivity exercised on our spirits. At the end of April our quiet existence was suddenly broken up. One evening the order was received to transfer fifty officers to the Officers’ Camp at Donington Hall. Excitement ran high, for no one wanted to leave; but neither entreaties nor opposition prevailed. We had to pack our trunks and march off. I was the only naval officer of the party, and that, unfortunately, because the English Commandant of the camp considered the proximity of London too dangerous a temptation for me. My devoted friend, Siebel, an army flying-officer, followed me, so at least we two of the same service remained together. On the 1st of May, therefore, we moved off again. Motor-cars took us to Maidenhead Station, where two reserved carriages were waiting for us. We remained undisturbed in our compartments; but the carriages themselves were strictly guarded. For many hours we rolled northwards. At the stations people looked into our windows curiously, but preserved a quiet demeanour. Sometimes an old woman, probably a suffragette, put out her unlovely tongue at us. At last in the afternoon we reached the station, Donington Castle, near Derby, where we had to fall in in squads. Guarded by sixty or seventy soldiers, we were marched off on the order “Quick march.”