About five hundred returned prisoners, mostly London men, arrived at Cannon Street Station yesterday. Several of the men related horrible stories of brutal treatment by the Germans.
A young R.A.M.C. non-commissioned officer stated that in the last camp at which he was, out of one thousand five hundred men originally forming the camp, only forty-seven were left when he came away. Over five hundred had died from starvation and exhaustion, and the remainder had been removed to various German hospitals.
“The worst sight of ail that I came across was near Soissons. I was working in a hospital where an English prisoner was suffering badly from dysentery. While still alive he way put into a coffin, and some German soldiers were preparing to nail the lid of the coffin down protested, but the Germans laughed and proceeded with their task, and afterward informed me that they had nailed the coffin lid down with four and six-inch nails.”
A Plaistow man had a horrible tale to tell of the methods of punishment adopted at Lemberg. For the least offense men were put in steam ovens and left there to become unconscious.