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TEN THOUSAND BLUEJACKETS FORM MONSTER LIVING FLAG low, with no chance for their Jives, whenever the, Moewe sigh tell 'another • vessel, has beep told by others, and" Smith’s narrative of th.it need not be repeated. He arrived with the rest t at Klel^Jenuany, on March 21, and j next da^T with all the Moowe’s [>ris- | oners, was> sent to Duel men, Westpha-1 11a, a town about ten miles from the , Holland border. t ' Captors "Oh Leave.” "We were sent down there In third class c<* r} C> Smith said, "with one I guard to each ten men. The guurjfs ] were all mldd-le-aged Germans -'who r had been at the front and who were home on furlough. They complained ' bitterly because when they got a leave it wasn’t really, a leave at all. They had to do._gyard duty or work In a factory or on a farm. This trip last ed all night, but we didn’t get’a scrap (ST food till we had breakfast at Duel- men in the morning. "The camp consisted of a lot of low, Connecticut Man Arrives Home After Escape Into Sweden', on Fertilizer Boat. — . HERE IS “COLLEtfEISF / PRIVATE IN U. S.-ARMY • San /Antonio, Tex.—The 'best ed ucate« 1 mai i in the soul hern <le- part men t of the army hns, been found in Private George B. L. Thornton. He wuVbprn in Eng land, but now is an American citizen and enlisted man In the quartermaster’s service. »Here Is his collegiate' education: One year In College St. Servuls, Liege. Belgium ; one year Hi College St. 'Michael, Fribourg. Switzerland: four years in St. Bede college; Manchester, England"; Tfiur years to graduatloh from the Universi ty .of'Oxford.' He.Is getting $110 a month. ” Cost 80 Pounds In. Seven Months B fore Aid Came—Guards Worse Off Than Prisoners and Glad to Get Scraps ^rom Food the New Yorkr--\Vhat Is a German pris on camp like, from the prisoner’s view point? •: - What sort of food, treatment, com forts (If!, any) do the then .receive who are captured by the Germans? How do the. captives stand German prison conditions? wobdqn: unpninted shacks, wfth plain hoard tloorkrv Around the walls ran bunks, one above another. Each bunk bad a bag of straw for a mattress, and two medium weight blankets. There were four of these shacks in each In- closure at Duelmen. Each inclbsure held about 1,000 prisoners, and had a 12-foot barbed wire fence around it, with the wire at the top bent inward so you couldn’t get over. How many of these inclosures there were—edph with its four shacks—I don’t know, but I was told there were 50,p00 pris- Amerlenns are more than ever vi the fafms I managed to get a pair <if w ooden shoes #to keep my feet off the ground. "There had been promises of Bed Cross packages and Y, M. C. A. boxes at Brandenburg, but they hadn’t ar rived '"when I left. "At Luebeck . everything was much better. They kept us lu a bjg'ware house on the Hamburg-American quay, and made us load and unload ships. But here we hud steamer bunks to sleep in and decent blunkets, and It was luxury compared to the other places. We had the same old bum coffee and turnip soup—but our guards got the same. Then in the sumnjer we began to receive some clothing from the International Y. M. C. A. and some food boxes froi£ the American Red Crpss through Copenhagen. \> What Y. M. C. A. Sent. “Every week we got a box that had in ft 60 biscuits, some corned beef, veal loaf, suet pudding, condensed milk! one-quarter pound of tea, a slice of bacon, a can of fruit, 60 cigarettes and some tobacco. That sajv us through. It was so good we felt sorry for the poor guards and woulu-^-glve them scraps. > They offered as high as 50 marks for' a pound of tea. And the bacon they would have given anything tally Interested In these questions, since some of General Pershing’s sob dlers were made, prisoners a few days ago In a trench raid In France. Through the narrative of an Amer ican adventurei;’ who less than a month ago escaped from a German prison and who had had experience with two other confinement camps, the New York World is able to give answers to. the question's. . - '•» . 1 - Captured by Moewe. The narrator is Willet C. Smith of 8outh Norwalk, Conn., who reached this country on November 6 from Swe den, to which land "lie escaped from Luebeck, Germany, by concealing hlm- aelf In the hold of a vessel and ex isting six days without food or wa- oners "Then there was another harbed wire fence, higher and thicker, on the outside of a roadway which rau around the entire camp. Every 200 feet around this barrier was a sentry box and a sentry. Inside of each smaller inclosure there were two armed guards, marching back and forth. Nationalities Separated. “The nationalities were all separat ed. The Frppch prisoners were kept by themselves. They seemed to get the worst treatment. The Russians were by themselves and we Americans were kept with the English. Nobody got what you’d call good treatment. "For breakfast every morning we got a piece of bread an inch and a half thick and about four Inches square and one tlncup of what they called coffee— hut I’d call good writer spoiled. I dhn’t know what they made it out of, but It was rotten, bitter stuff and not even This'lmifiensp living Hug, complete in every detail, was formed by 10,001 Jiiejackets at the, naval station at Great Lakes, 111., a few days ago. It was njd out' with consideration .of the law of perspective so that when photo- .rnplied It stood out in proper proportions^. There were 290 men In the brill nil 560 men In the pole. The flag Itself, measured 293 feet In length at the ip aml*72 feet at the bottom. Grouped in the stars were men Crom nearly Smith had been a prisoner, first aboard the German raider Moewe, then tjn camp at Duelmen, then at Branden burg and finally at Luebeck. for seven months and one day. He fied on Octo ber 11. • - Summed up. his testimony Is this: There is no particular brutality, no clubbing with guns or stabbing with bayonets as long as prisoners remain orderly. But the food is Insufficient— be fell away from 210 to 130 pounds— and long continued subsistence upon German prison fare alone hfts most grievous effects upon the health. Only the Red Cross and Y. M, C, A. supplies are keeping the prisoners alive at some confinement places. Brandenburg.^ where about' 7Q.000 prisoners of allied nations were kept, was the worst camp Smith encounter ed. * This is in Prussia, not far from Berlin. Duelmen, lit Westphalia, was bad enough, although the treatment was better. At Luebeck. which Is not a .camp but a port where prisoners are worked on the. waterfront, condi tions were not had at all. Guards Worse Off. The German soldiers guarding the prisoners were far worse oft there than the captives. Smith declares. Re lief organizations keep the prisoners supplied with cuouglp/ood and clothes to get along, with, and the middle-aged guards, half starving and In patches, beg supplies from their captive ene- very state In the Union AMERICAN TROOPS WHO ARE NOW FIGHTING IN FRANCE "For dinner and supper we had the same thing every day—-turnip soup, with mighty few turnips in it. We never hud anything ejse. No meat, no potatoes, no' bread, even, except at breakfast. You could take the turnip soup or starve. It was Just about enough to keep you alive. Some of the fellows got so weak they’d have to be Carried to the hospital. There they'd get nourishing food for a few days, but as soon us they were a little stronger they’d be chucked o«ut of the hospital. There wasn’t much of what you’d ,call real suffering at Duelman— and the guards Were decent enough— hut It wasn’t much of a life." Sent to Brandenburg., On April 3 Smith and his fellow captives of the Moewe were sent from Duelman to the notorious camp at Brandenburg, which is on the Havel river, between Berlin and Magdeburg. Again they had an all-night trip with out food and ^crowded- into narrow wooden benches in the worst sort of cars. -— - "Here we had Prussians for guards, nnd'they were,, wicked devils,"- Smith went on. "The camp was the same sort of a place as Duelman, with harbed wire Inner “Inclosures, and then u roadway circling the whole camp and barred on the outside with wire. "At Duelman they would turn us out and count us only twice a day, but at Brandenburg they gave us the ‘raus’ a dozen times. ’They’d keep us standing barefoot in the snow for hours until some major would come up and verify the final .count. By this time our shoes had worn out, and most of us. actually ‘black hole,” with only a piece of ^'•ead a day to eat. Also a big Ger- a*an guard “took a couple of cracks" rj his face. * "The Spanish ambassador came to -s^e us Americans on June 1 and prom ised to send us books and clothing, hut I never suw any of them. They dltWbegln to put a few potatoes into theTurnip soup, and occasionally they put about five pounds of meat into the soup supply for 300 men. r ... Another Getaway Chance. "In October I made up my mind to take another chance on a getawny. The ships we were loading were plying be tween Luebeck and Swedish ports, and I thought I might hide on one of these. They carried mostly salt fertiliser to Sweden, though sometimes gome coal and coke, and they brought -back pig- irori and ore. I never saw them bring in any foodstuffs. Sometimes the Ger man ships would go out carrying barbed wire and Iron rods for the trenches on the Russian front. They went to Riga, I believe. “There was, -one boat, the Undine, which traveled between Luebeck and a Swedish port named Norrkoping reg ularly. I gol acquainted with a Swede on board her, and he told me one oth er fellow had made his getawny to NoFrkoping by Concealing himself in the hold. “My scheme was this: Kyery morn ing the guard would get together an early working crew of 12 men at four o’clock. He would take them on board while it was dark, to get tjie hatches ready for the others. One morning when I wasn’t in this squad I hid my self ip the hallway where they always lined up. The guard' counted his 12, and then In the darkness I Joined them. - As we .climbed aboard the Undine he didn’t know he had 13. in stead of ,12. He was a boneheaded German anyhow, . "I hid myself in the fertilizer—a combination of salt and sulphur. ^Wh»t It did to me was plenty. My feet are still full of holes and the nails are "They’re sick and disgusted with the war, these fellows at Luebeck," 8mlth says. "They’ would often say: *Look at us, without enough to' eat or wear! The kaiser's -no earthly good! He's crazy. Germany’s starv ing- and licked nnd yet he keeps on fighting !* Smith, a railroad hrakeman by trade and a “boomer" by Inclination, .sailed from Newport News on Januury 28 for Liverpool as foreman of 54 American horse-wranglers. When his ship, "the British-owned steamer. Es : meralda, was on her return voyage In March she was captured, robbed* and sunk by the raider Moewe, and her crew added to the prisoners of that ad venturous craft, who numbered at the end of the -Moewe's raiding voyage shove 600. How the prisoners were shut be- conn«TTtx oh FOMLtc miwwriPN MADE BY FRENCH PRISONERS were barefoot THE THINKER “Tin* Prussians hauled and shoved us around like cattle, although I must say I didn’t see any one struck or stabbed who didn’t have It coming to him. "At Brandenburg we got. the same old food—turnip soup, with never a change. They made the strongest of us work on farms outside the Inclo sure, clearing the ground for the spring planting; but we got no better food than the rest. “We nearly froze to death at Bran denburg. There were small stoves In the huts, hut they didn’t begin to worm them.' The blankets^you could see through them! We were all full of insects and had to have our clothes fumigated ever* two weeks, hut In a couple o’ Vj# we’d be ns bad 4is ever. <Set8 Job on Docks. “I was about ready to take a des- perate chance for escape when on May 1. they asked for 300 volunteers to go to work on the docks at Luebeck. They said they’d give us hoots, better clothes and a mark a day for wages. \ thought anything was better than was For six days then (an nil usual’y long Journey) Smith remained In the hold. When the vessel docked n* Norrkoping and the hajeh was opened he dashed down the gangplank to safety. Thft Swedish police gave him water and food; American- consulate attache,s clothed him and sent him to Stockholm and then to Christiania. Nofway, and there he boarded the U.psr Bergensjord for home*.— _ i.r ; . ' i & k ;XV mm- v ... •• f';:t flf/./V’J Adopted 22 Children. Vineland, N J.—William J. Purvis of Rosenhayn celebrated the forty-sec ond anniversary of his marriage th< other day by coming to Vineland and Visiting the old hoipestead .on Oak road. Purvis was married" In Mill ville and the next morning he and ii ,? bride ndopte<l five jrieedy children. The couple have'kept that practice up «o- tll now they can point with pride t( a family of 22 that they have rained atwlpent out Into the world, all Imbued with the-Puryls spirit of Amelia- first The foster father Is a survivor qf th* Civil war and extremely patriotic Brandenburg, so I volunteered and taken. "The clothes they gave us wereb uniforms with a yellow stripe down the pants and a yelloi* band fitted into the sleevep^lth our number and the word ‘Krlegsgefatigenlager’ (war prison) ob them., “They did give us better footgear, but you were Just likely as pot to get one boot and one‘shoe, and differ^ ent size**. And wb<o they half-soled a shoe they did it with the upper part of an old boot. They had scarcely any leather ajr alL While I was w or kips on This unique monumeut was made by; French prisoners of war in the camp at Stuttgart, Germany, us a tribute tM tlieii” comrades who have died In bat tle for their beloved country ♦ Kissing., An optimist hold.? fids pleasant proa- pect out to enjpiged couptea: "Unmar ried couples kiss and forgive, liar* ried couples kiss and declare a true# while the heavy artillery is being ah*** General Mpnn, commander of the Forty-second or “Rainbow" division, the body of National Guard troops selected from 311 different states, who Is now In France At the head of his tn*ops, is shown the left of the photograph. With him Is'Col. Dougins McArthur, chief of staff of the "Rainbow" division. Both the departure from till? side and the arrival In France of the Guardsmen was kept a closely guarded secret.. ~f ■ -> N • , An old Frenchwoman seutecF In. the Idst df what was once her home. RK8UIT »Vt7 m SfeJB