Forgive me for not writing to you for the past year. I had been captured by the Germans as a prisoner of war. We were taken to a camp (I think they called it a "mannschaftslager") that was surrounded by a barbed wire fence that was 3 metres high. The camp was made of barracks that were made of wood and covered with tar on the outside. I estimated that each barrack was around 10 metres wide and 50 metres long, big enough to house around 250 prisoners. We slept on straw or sawdust beds.
During the day, we were all put to work. Everybody dreaded working in the mines or swamp but I was lucky enough to do agricultural labour. There were quotas set but otherwise, agricultural labour was quite easy. Food at the camp was not constant. Usually it was some soup made with beans, codfish, prunes, beets or oats. Sometimes, we receive food parcels from the Red Cross.
One thing about the camps is that there was almost always someone sick. The hygiene there was severely lacking and living together in such close proximity with so many people allowed for typhus and cholera to spread quickly. I was, again, one of the lucky ones who had only suffered from a few common colds.
You may be wondering how I had "escaped" from the camps but truthfully, the armistice signed on Nov. 11, 1918 guaranteed the release of prisoners of war. At this time, there has been an agreement to ceasefire and I shall wait here until arrangements have been made for me to come back home to you.
Take care,
George Wright
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Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_prisoners_of_war_in_Germany
http://www.prisonersofwar1914-1918documents.com/
http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww1/cas/w1c-pow.html
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