Once in two months a ration of sausage was dished out. For breakfast once a week there was one pint of acorn coffee without sugar or milk and one and a half square inches of Limburger cheese. To quote from the diary: "Before serving, open all windows and doors. Then send for the Russians to take it away." The Germans discriminated against the British prisoners. When there was any disagreeable duty; the cry went up for "der Englaender." The much-sought-for cookhouse jobs all went to the French, who waxed fat in consequence. No Britisher was ever allowed near the cookhouse. The French had for the most part been there for some time, and, their country lying so close by; they were receiving parcels. We were not, and this made the food problem a very serious one for us. Their supplies were received through Switzerland which was the one anchor to windward for so many of us in this and other respects. At first the French used to give us a certain amount of their own food, but eventually ceased to do so. Most of them worked down in the town daily and could "square" the guard long enough to buy tobacco at twenty-five pfennigs--or two and a half pence--a package, which they sold to us later at eighty pfennigs--until we got on to their profiteering. CHAPTER XI THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GIESSEN "Raus!"--The Strafe Barracks--The Appeal for Casement--Why Parcels Should Be Sent--A Hell on Earth--That Brickyard Fatigue--Gott Strafe England--Slow Starvation--Merciless Discipline--Canadian Humor--The Debt We Owe--Inoculating for Typhoid?--Joseph's Coat of Many Colors--The Russian Who Unwound the Rag--The Monotony of the Wire--Teaching the Germans the British Salute. Except for the starving, as I look back now, Giessen was not such a bad camp as such places go. At least it was the best that we were to know. The discipline, of course, was fairly severe, but on the other hand the Commandant did not trouble us a great deal. The petty annoyances were harder to endure. Frequently we would get the "Raus!" at half-hour intervals by day or night; "Raus out!" "Raus in!" and so on. We never knew what our tormentors wanted but supposed it to be a systematic attempt to break our spirit and our nerve by the simple expedient of habitually interfering with our sleep so that we would become like the Russians. They were mostly utterly broken in spirit and had the air of beaten dogs, so that they cringed and fawned to their masters. The least punishment meted out for the most trifling offense was three days' cells. Some got ten years for refusing to work in munition and steel factories, particularly British and Canadians. There are large numbers of both who are to-day serving out sentences of from eighteen months to ten years in the military fortresses of Germany under circumstances of the greatest cruelty.