In the future annals of the war, one Acting Sergeant Major, Alexander Schröder, chief of _III Kompanie_, Parchim _Gefangenenlager_, better known to the Englishmen as “Mad Alek,” deserves a large but ignominious chapter. His ludicrous air of blood-curdling bravado and his childish efforts to play the role of the Chocolate Soldier make him as laughable as his brutish cruelties made him an object of dread and hate to the thousands of prisoners who passed through his hands. We runaways, nine in number, were lined up in the _Büro_ to give up our valuables before entering the Arrest Barracks, when this creature swaggered in. He cut a dashing figure with the air of a champion in feats of arms--_gained from combats with helpless prisoners_--and a pair of polished spurs, a clanking sword and a fiercely up-turned mustache completed the picture. Every prisoner and German sprang to attention. “What are these?” he demanded, pointing at us. “Runaways, sir?” ventured someone timidly. “_Was? Was?_ Runaways?” Then began a thrilling oration, illustrated with the drawn sword, on the wretchedness and depravity of us all and of all the foul races from whence we sprang. “This man,” said the _Unteroffizier_ humbly, pointing at a Russian, “has a complaint to make.” With a trembling hand the Russian presented a letter signed by a German lady. She testified to the brutal treatment which the prisoner had suffered at the hands of his master, driving him to desperation and flight. “He _beat_ you, did he?” sneered “Mad Alek,” aroused to fury again. “I wouldn’t have beaten you--not me! I wouldn’t have _beaten_ you. I would have _killed_ you!” and he went through the movement with his sword--“for the surly swine you are!” The right to demand a writ of Habeas Corpus was never observed in a German prison camp. Offenders were thrown into the arrest barrack and began the _Hungerstraf_ immediately a complaint was lodged and trial awaited the casual convenience of the officer of justice. The _Hungerstraf_ I found to consist of confinement to a bedless and fireless barrack on a diet of pure and undiluted water. There were no other Englishmen there at the time, but I met a Belgian who kept me agreeable company. He had been four days at large, sleeping, as he said, in the hay-stacks, and making for Warnemünde where he had hoped to board a Danish ship. He was a ’14 prisoner and had attempted escape many times before. He seemed but a youth with the smooth face of a girl, but he knew all the tortures of German captivity at its worst. “I only want to get back and fight again,” he said bitterly. “I shall run away again and again until I succeed, or die--or peace is declared!” I was not long, however, in discovering some English neighbors. They were in the Work Barrack, which adjoined ours, and to which we would be conducted after forty-eight hours of fasting.