For those were hungry days. Indeed it is hard not to make the first two months a mere chronicle of sauerkraut. I honestly believe that the Germans gave us as much food as they could, considering we were “useless mouths”: but it was precious little. After all it is one thing to be reduced to short rations by slow gradations, but it is a very different thing to be taken from the flesh-pots of France where one eats a great deal too much, to a vegetable diet that was not nearly sufficient. There was only one proper meal a day: lunch. We then got two plates of soup, three or four potatoes, and a spoonful or two of beetroot or cabbage. The effect lasted for three hours. Supper rarely provided potatoes; usually two plates of thin soup, and sauerkraut or barley porridge. In addition there was a fortnightly issue of sugar, a weekly issue of jam, and a bi-weekly issue of bread. On this last issue the _Gefangener’s_ fate depended. Life simplified itself into an attempt to spread out a small loaf of bread over four days. It did not often succeed. On the first day one carefully marked out on the crust the limit at which each day’s plunderings must stop. The loaf was divided, first of all, into four equal parts, then each quarter was again marked out in divisions; so much for breakfast, so much for tea, so much for supper. It did not work. Each day removed its neighbour’s landmark. By the third day only a little edge of crust remained. It was demolished by tea-time, and nothing quite equalled the depression of the evening of that third day. The worst time was at eight o’clock. The effect of a slender supper had by then worn off, and there was the comforting reflection that for sixteen hours there was not the least likelihood of being able to lay hand on any food; and the dizziness of a breakfastless morning is an experience no one would wish to indulge in twice. They were strange days, and strange things happened. Money ceased to have any value unless it could be turned into edible substance. Those with big appetites carried on a sort of secret service to obtain bread; fabulous sums were offered for a quarter of a loaf of bread that contained less flour than potatoes; and, at a time when a mark was worth a shilling, there were those who were prepared to pay seventy-five marks for a loaf; and twenty marks for half a loaf was the lowest rate of exchange. One knew then the emotions of the man with threepence in his pocket; who is feeling ravenously hungry and knows that, if he spends that threepence on dinner, he will have nothing left for the next day. It is an alternative that in terms of brown bread has presented itself to every prisoner of war.