For those in cattle trucks

TCD MS 10823 folio 10 recto

TCD MS 10823 folio 10 recto

[March 24th 1918] a decent fellow and gave us some <post> cards which he promised to send off, to let our relations know that we were alive and which I believe did eventually arrive. Next morning we were given some more thin soup after which we were marched to the station at Aulnoye, where we were entrained. Except for our escort and forty of us, who were lucky enough to get a 2nd class carriage, all the other officers and men were crowded <in cattle trucks> 40-50 to each truck. In these they were locked in <packed like sardines & without and sanitary arrangements of any kind & it was not till over twenty four hours afterwards that> they were taken out for a meal.  For them and for the men, the journey was a terrible one.

We had entrained at midday, but dawdled along past Maubeuge and Namur, going for a mile or two and then stopping for an hour, and it was not till nine o’clock the following morning that we were allowed out of our carriages at Liege for a meal which only consisted of soup. Our next meal of soup was some twelve hours later near to Cologne. On the way there we had passed through Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) and if we had known then how close we were to the Dutch frontier we might have made an attempt to get away. The next day we followed  the banks of the Rhine through very pretty scenery, partaking about midday of another meal of <soup> at Kaiserslautern – how I am beginning <have got> to hate the sight of soup – Eventually about nine o’clock at night we arrived at our destination: Karlsruhe, after spending 57 hours in the train.  For those in the cattle trucks, This must have been absolute misery. On the platform at Karlsruhe only the first <eighty> officers that got out <from the front part> of the train were taken <& of these I was one>, the remainder were put <back> into the train and sent on to Rastatt.
We were marched through the town to a building that had once been a Hotel and here we were put into rooms, two or three