Page:Diary of a Prisoner in World War I by Josef Šrámek.pdf/116

 Our team goes around to all the houses, stack to stack, with the thresher. They have no barns here—the straw stays stacked in the fields. Passing crops up to the machine in heat and dust is real hard work.

Threshing here is a feast when the patron tries to out-feast the neighbor. Soup, 2-3 kinds of roast meat (mostly mutton), vegetables, salads, eggs, butter, and, on top of it all, snails, oysters, and fish. When they first gave us snails, we did not know what to do with them, and one exceptionally clever Croat wanted to crush them with his fist on the table like walnuts.

I can't stand the Croats, and they know it. They repay me when they can. How on earth did I get among these bastards?

Thresher menu: white coffee and bread and butter in the morning; pauper's snack is bread soup, duck with carrots, potatoes with butter, mixed salad, and pap.

Lunch and supper: pap (milk and semolina; the pap is very sweet). Snails in great sauce—we have learned how to eat them, and we enjoy them. The French have started to treat us differently—they eat in the kitchen, and we sit in an extra room. There are huge beds made up high. One lies right next to the ceiling. I wouldn't like falling down at night. The bed has a huge canopy in Louis XV Style. There are great lacquered chests, clocks, and floors of stomped clay.