Sworn statements from British soldiers returned from German prison camps and hospitals received by Reuter's Agency (the Associated Press of Great Britain) indicate that systematic brutality is practiced there upon Italian prisoners. Lance Corporal Horace Hills, 7th Suffolk Regiment, made the following statement under oath:

Five or six thousand Italians came in. They had traveled three or four days, and had had nothing at all to eat. After they arrived soup was brought in, and, as they were starving, they rushed at it. The Germans then dashed forward and stabbed them with their swords and bayonets, and killed and wounded a lot. Seven or eight Italians were dying every day in the camp of starvation. They had no parcels. I saw an Englishmen give an Italian bread, and the Italian went down on his knees and kissed his hands.

Private J. F. Jackson, King's Liverpool Regiment, swore:

One Italian told me they had been fifteen days on the journey and had only three meals all the time. Our hospital lager was separated from the camp by barbed wire; we took some bread and threw it over the wire to the Italians; they all began to grab for it, but a lot of Germans rushed up and drew their bayonets and flourished them in the air in a threatening manner, and kicked and threw the Italians about, and got the bread for themselves.

At Friedrichsfeld the treatment of the Italians was equally barbarous, the sentries shooting them for trying to get food from the British. Equally revolting stories come from Ohrdrup, Nammelburgh, Stendal, Soltau, Limburg, and Hamburg.