TCD MS 10823 folio 38a recto
[Sept/Oct 1918] Among the officer prisoners were three Frenchmen, three Italians, one Belgian and five British Officers, as Lord Farnham, Ashbourne & Howitt who had escaped from Furstenberg also joined us there. Lord Farnham & Howitt – Ashbourne had become separated from them, had made a wonderful journey getting as far as the Kiel canal, but the coal train that they had relied upon to take them across the canal had taken off, & as they were too exhausted to go on, they had to give themselves up.
The time passed quickly enough at Parchim & we had only fourteen days to do. We were in the IXth Army Corps where the treatment was just, and the conditions very unlike those which prevailed in the Xth (Hanover) Command.
One night the Frenchman who was in the cell next to mine, cut the barbed wire that was fastened across his window and escaped. There was barbed wire across the window but no sentry stationed outside his window & the lights in the camp were few & far between, so that once outside there was a very good chance of getting away. I heard afterwards that he was recaptured near the Dutch frontier, having travelled most of the way in a Train-de-Luxe.
The next night besides having a sentry on duty outside my window, I was woken up nine times during the night by sentries that came into my room flashed a light into my face to see if I was really present. I protested against this treatment to the Commandant & was only visited twice the following nights.
Edmundson was able to get some eggs one day from a friendly sentry & he most nobly sent over half of them to me, – the first fresh eggs I had eaten in Germany.
Here we used to get hold of a Hamburg paper and