Every now and again a waggon-load of briquettes used to come in under escort for discharge in the coal cellars of Kaserne B. On these occasions we used to help unloading the waggon—but not into the coal cellars. A crowd of officers with British warms and trench coats with capacious pockets suddenly appeared from nowhere, swarmed round the waggon and its disconcerted sentinel, and contrived to get a bit of their own back. For rank exploitation, however, the food supply was _facile princeps_. We might forgive the Germans for the food they offered us; we could not forgive them either for the way they served it or for the price they made us pay for it. In one of the cellars aforementioned our year’s potato supply was stored. This came in in October. Three English orderlies were on permanent fatigue in this cellar, peeling the daily potato ration for the camp. When the peeling was complete the potatoes were thrown into one of the two large coppers in the German cook-house (the other contained hot water) and were boiled up in relentless conjunction with the other ingredients billed for that particular day. It did not matter what they were; everything went into the hotch-potch, and, so long as it eventually boiled and was ladled out into big pails for despatch to the dining rooms, all was well. On Sundays there was an occasional lump of horse-flesh floating in the stew and some green vegetable which might fairly be classified as “a not too French French bean”; on one Sunday, as a variation, the skull of a cow complete except for skin and ears was found floating in the pot. On other days plain _sauerkraut_, or its equivalent nastiness. Occasionally there was some barley grain which, with many of us, did duty as porridge for our next morning’s breakfast. Such was our bill of fare for the mid-day meal. Our breakfast was _ersatz_ coffee: our supper was an attenuated version of our lunch. And for this we were mulcted monthly to the tune of 60 marks a head. No doubt this charge would have been exceeded, if it had been possible; but an agreement between the British and German Governments had fixed the sum of 60 marks as the limit which a subaltern prisoner-of-war might receive as pay whilst in captivity, and the Germans could not therefore legally charge any more. As it was, there was nothing left on which a subaltern might come and go for ordinary out-of-pocket expenses in the canteen or in camp subscriptions; and to meet these requirements he had to draw a cheque on his bankers which was discounted with a neutral agent by the Germans at a ruinous rate of exchange for himself and with a very comfortable margin of profit for everybody else concerned. No one, of course, who could live on his own supply of tins thought of looking at the German food. It was too impossibly served. Messes would sometimes depute one of their members to make a dive into the soup tub and rescue some of the better looking potatoes wherewith to supplement the evening stew.