小库尔特·冯内古特写给父亲的信(2)

Under the Geneva Convention, Officers and Non-commissioned Officers are not obliged to work when taken prisoner.

I am, as you know, a Private. One-hundred-and-fifty such minor beings were shipped to a Dresden work camp on January 10th.

I was their leader by virtue of the little German I spoke. It was our misfortune to have sadistic and fanatical guards.

We were refused medical attention and clothing: We were given long hours at extremely hard labor.

Our food ration was two-hundred-and-fifty grams of black bread and one pint of unseasoned potato soup each day.

After desperately trying to improve our situation for two months and having been met with bland smiles I told the guards just what I was going to do to them when the Russians came.

They beat me up a little. I was fired as group leader. Beatings were very small time: -- one boy starved to death and the SS Troops shot two for stealing food.

On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R. A. F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden -- possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me.

After that we were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters; women, children, old men; dead from concussion, fire or suffocation.

Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres in the city.