Page:Diary of a Prisoner in World War I by Josef Šrámek.pdf/107

 and neat with their beards under bands. They even started intimate relationships with girls and soldier wives. That was forbidden and punished severely; this was why the guards were always with us, going to work and home, locking us up at night: Certainly not for fear that we might run but to prevent us from contacting the civilians.

Gradually the discipline loosened. The guards also started to pursue their own interests, and as our boys were together with the workers all day—in the fields, barns, sheds, and stables—it was difficult to prevent contact. Many friendships and love affairs were started, and when the matter became too widely public, the prisoners were just relocated to another village in a different district, and gone were the affairs. The persistent ones, though, found their ways even so. They found good-hearted Frenchmen who delivered letters secretly. We had trouble writing these letters, but finally we made it. I wrote so many love letters for my friends, always following a single formula: "Ma cherie Viktorine, Germaine, Lussete, etc. Je pense—je ne—oublie jamais… " My friends, Valdeman and Novacek: what's left of these promises?

But never mind. It improved our miserable lives, that daily contact with the village people who were kind and sympathetic. They often kept our minds busy with their "pauvre