'A Wicked Lot of People,' Says Pte Morris. (from Switzerland)

A Canadian soldier, Pte, G, T, Morris, now interned in Switzerland, in a letter to friends, gives a graphic a count of his experiences at the Somme and of the hardships of German prison camp, He says:

We were to go over in waves, and I was on a machine gun covering the third wave.' then he tells of missing the gun's crew in the noise and smoke, then of finding two of the men, and next of an inquiring party coming to ask for the others and where the German trenches were, which nobody knew. Then Morris was asked if he would volunteer to find out. 'So 1 carrying a message under fire to what 1 found to be a German trench and reported back. Then comes the story of being hit in the knee cap, and of having to stay in the trench until left alone, 'A Major who had used his revolver to the last, and was then carried out by a companion, himself wounded in the head, were the last to go. A comrade called for assistance as Morris tried to shift for himself, and the two together moved about until another shell killed his friend and he was left with the piles of dead about.

He tells then of having bombs thrown at him, and of saving himself by throwing them away, until a wounded German called to his own men 'Englander wounded.' He was then given treatment for his wounded knee, and left with a bottle of water. Later he crawled into an old dugout, and was subsequently buried for three days by a shell explosion, but dug himself out with a German bayonet.

'I suppose you imagine all sorts of horrid things,' he adds, writing from Switzerland, 'They are, on the whole, a wicked lot of people. 1 have seen many sights that would make you cry to hear told,' He saw two of his comrades die in the camp from actual starvation, and seven to ten Russians were dying every day during the three months that he was there from the same cause.