The Author and an English Fellow-Prisoner, from Photograph Taken Three Months Before the Armistice. The Author isWearing an Old French Uniform With Which he was Fitted Out AfterRunning Away and Losing his Regulation Prison Costume
OR
HOW IT FELT TO BE A PRISONER OF WAR
By BEN MUSE
36926 Lance-Corporal 11th King’s Royal Rifles
Price 50 Cents
Copyright, 1919
BY
BEN MUSE
THE SEEMAN PRINTERY, DURHAM, N. C.
The following narrative tells of the adventures of an American boy inGerman imprisonment from his capture November 30, 1917, to his releaseDecember 9, 1918. The author is a native of Durham, N. C., and astudent of Trinity College, who went over and joined the English forcesbefore America’s entry into the war, serving in the Eleventh King’sRoyal Rifles six months and going through the severe fighting aroundYpres and Cambrai before his capture.
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I was bandaging poor Sergeant Sharpy’s wounds.
“It’s all up with us, Muse,” he said.
I feared that it was all up with him, at any rate, as I clumsilytried to stop the torrent of blood which was flowing from his head andshoulders.
It was after an hour of one of those hells such as only soldiers ofthe line can understand, when death and suffering were everywhere andsurvival seemed the rare and lucky exception. The machine gun corporalon my left had died at his gun, and the contorted body of my good oldmate, “Wally,” blocked the view farther down the trench. On my rightthe three survivors of my section were still firing furiously over theparapet.
Personally I had not suffered from the barrage beyond the interruptionof my preparation for breakfast. The biscuits and jam and chocolate layspread on the edge of my “hole,” and the canteen of tea-water over myboot-dubbin fire steadily refused to boil. I left the wounded sergeantto look over the top. The mass of running grey uniforms was now verynear us. I could see the flags which they carried and hear the roar of“Hurrahs” between the bursting of shells.
But who were those brown, unarmed figures running over on our left?My God! They were our own chaps—already captured! I glanced quicklyaround. The Germans were at our rear! The little hill behind us wasdotted with the grey figures, and those flags could be seen in every