Chapter 7 No.7

The press of work at the headquarters of a division during operations comes in periods of intense activity, during which every member of the staff, from the General downwards, feels that he is being asked to do the work of three men in an impossibly short space of time. One of these periods, that in which the orders for the initial stages of the attack had been distributed, had just passed, and a comparative calm had succeeded. Even the operator of the "buzzer" instrument, ensconced in a little triangular tent just large enough to hold one man in a prone position, had found time to smoke.

Divisional headquarters had been established at a point where five roads met, just below the crest of a low hill. A few yards away the horses clinked their bits and grazed. Occasionally the distant boom of a gun made them prick their ears and stare reflectively in the direction of the sound. The sun, with every promise of a fine day, was slowly dispelling the mist from the valley and woodlands below.

It was early: the battle had scarcely yet begun.

A huge map had been spread out on a triangular patch of grass at the road junction, its corners held down with stones. Staff officers lay around it talking eagerly. Above, on the top of the hill, General Maudeslay leant against a bank and gazed into the mist. The night attack, he knew, had been successful, and he was anxiously awaiting the appearance of the battery on Point 548.

Tony was stretched at full length on the grass below him. He was warm, he was dry, and he was not hungry-a rare combination on service.

"This would be a grand cub-hunting morning, General," he said.

Ordinarily "the Maud" would have responded with enthusiasm, for hounds and hunting were the passion of his life. But now his thoughts were occupied with other matters, and he made no reply.

Then suddenly, as though at the rising of a curtain at a play, things began to happen. The telephone operator lifted his head with a start as his instrument began to give out its nervous, jerky, zt-zzz-zt. There was a clatter of hoofs along the road, and the sliding scrape of a horse pulled up sharply as an orderly appeared and handed in a message. Rifle fire, up till then desultory and unnoticed, began to increase in volume. The mist had gone.

"The Maud," motionless against the bank, kept his glasses to his eyes for some minutes before lowering them, with a gesture of annoyance and exclaimed-

"It's curious. That battery ought to be on 548 by now, but I can see no sign of it."

"You can't see 548 from here, sir. It's hidden behind that wood," said Tony, pointing as he spoke.

"What do you mean? There's 548," said the General, also pointing, but to a hill much farther to their right.

"No, sir-at least not according to my map."

"The Maud" snatched the map from Tony's hand. A second's glance was enough. On it Point 548 was marked as being farther to the left and considerably nearer to the enemy.

He turned on Tony like a flash.

"Good Lord! Why didn't you tell me that before?" he cried. "There must be two different editions of this map. Which one had they in your brigade when you went over there last night-the right one or the wrong one?"

But Tony, unfortunately, had no idea. His interest in tactics, as we have seen, was small, and his visit had not involved him in a discussion of the plan of battle. He had not even looked at their maps.

"The Maud" walked round in one small circle while he hummed eight bars. Then he said-

"They must have started for the wrong hill, and in this mist they won't have realised their danger. That battery will be wiped out unless we can stop it." He looked round quickly. "Signallers-no-useless: and the telephone not yet through. Tony, you'll have to go. There's no direct road. Go straight across country and you may just do it."

Tony was already halfway to the horses.

"Take up Dignity's stirrups two holes," he called as he ran towards them. "Quick, man, quick!"

It took perhaps twenty seconds, which seemed like as many minutes. He flung away belt and haversack, crammed his revolver into a side pocket, and was thrown up into the saddle. "The Maud" himself opened the gate off the road.

"Like hell, Tony, like hell!"

The General's words, shouted in his ear as he passed through on to the grass, seemed echoed in the steady beat of Dignity's hoofs as he went up to his bridle and settled into his long raking stride.

Tony leant out on his horse's neck, his reins crossed jockey fashion, his knees pressed close against the light hunting saddle. Before him a faded expanse of green stretched out for two miles to the white cottage on the hillside which he had chosen as his point. The rush of wind in his ears, the thud of iron-shod hoofs on sound old turf, the thrill that is born of speed, made him forget for a moment the war, the enemy, his mission. He was back in England on a good scenting morning in November. Hounds were away on a straight-necked fox, and he had got a perfect start. Almost could he see them beside him, "close packed, eager, silent as a dream."

This was not humdrum soldiering-cold and hunger, muddy roads and dreary marches. It was Life.

"Steady, old man."

He leant back, a smile upon his lips, as a fence was flung behind them and the bottom of the valley came in sight.

"There's a brook: must chance it," he muttered, and then, mechanically and with instinctive eye, he chose his place. He took a pull until he felt that Dignity was going well within himself, and then, fifty yards away, he touched him with his heels and let him out. The stream, swollen with the deluge of the previous day, had become a torrent of swirling, muddy water, and it was by no means narrow. But Dignity knew his business. Gathering his powerful quarters under him in the last stride, he took off exactly right and fairly hurled himself into space.

They landed with about an inch to spare.

"Good for you!" cried Tony, standing in his stirrups and looking back, as they breasted the slope beyond. From the top he had hoped to see the battery somewhere on the road, but he found that the wood obstructed his view, and he was still uncertain, therefore, as to whether he was in time or not.

"It's a race," he said, and sat down in his saddle to ride a finish.

But halfway across the next field Dignity put a foreleg into a blind and narrow drain and turned completely over.

Tony was thrown straight forward on to his head and stunned.

* * *

A quarter of an hour later he had recovered consciousness and was staring about him stupidly. The air was filled with the din of battle, but apparently the only living thing near him was Dignity, quietly grazing. He noticed, at first without understanding, that the horse moved on three legs only. His off foreleg was swinging. Tony got up and limped stiffly towards him. He bent down to feel the leg and found that it was broken.

Slowly, reluctantly, he pulled out his revolver and put in a cartridge. It was, perhaps, the hardest thing he had ever had to do. He drew Dignity's head down towards the ground, placed the muzzle against his forehead and fired.

The horse swayed for a fraction of a second then collapsed forward, lifeless, with a thud: and Tony felt as though his heart would break.

Gradually he began to remember what had happened, and he wondered vaguely how long he had lain unconscious. In front of him stretched the wood which he had seen before he started, hiding from his view not only the actual hill but the road which led to it. He knew that on foot, bruised and shaken as he was, he could never now arrive in time. He had failed, and must return.

Then, as he stood sadly watching Dignity's fast glazing eyes he heard the thunder of hundreds of galloping hoofs, and looked up quickly. Round the corner of the wood, in wild career, came, not a cavalry charge as he had half expected, but teams-gun teams and limbers-but no guns. The battery had got into action on the hill, but a lucky hostile shell, wide of its mark, had dropped into the wagon line and stampeded the horses. A few drivers still remained, striving in vain to pull up. They might as well have tried to stop an avalanche.

Tony watched them flash past him to the rear. Still dazed with his fall, it was some seconds before the truth burst upon him.

He knew those horses.

"My God!" he cried aloud, "it's my own battery that's up there!"

In a moment all thought of his obvious duty-to return and report-was banished from his mind. He forgot the staff and his connection with it. One idea, and one only, possessed him-somehow, anyhow, to get to the guns.

Dizzily he started off towards the hill. His progress was slow and laboured. His head throbbed as though there was a metal piston within beating time upon his brain. The hot sun caused the sweat to stream into his eyes. The ground was heavy, and his feet sank into it at every step. Twice he stopped to vomit.

At last he reached the road and followed the tracks of the gun-wheels up it until he came to the gap in the hedge through which the battery had evidently gone on its way into action. The slope was strewn with dead and dying horses: drivers were crushed beneath them; and an up-ended limber pointed its pole to the sky like the mast of a derelict ship. The ground was furrowed with the impress of many heavy wheels, and everywhere was ripped and scarred with the bullet marks of low-burst shrapnel. But ominously enough, amid all these signs of conflict no hostile fire seemed to come in his direction.

The hill rose sharply for a hundred yards or so, and then ran forward for some distance nearly flat. Tony therefore, crawling up, did not see the battery until he was quite close to it.

Panting, he stopped aghast and stared.

Four guns were in position with their wagons beside them. The remnants of the detachments crouched behind the shields. Piles of empty cartridge-cases and little mounds of turf behind the trails testified that these four guns, at least, had been well served. But the others! One was still limbered up: evidently a shell had burst immediately in front of it. Its men and horses were heaped up round it almost as though they were tin soldiers which a child had swept together on the floor. The remaining gun pointed backward down the hill, forlorn and desolate.

In the distance, for miles and miles, the noise of battle crashed and thundered in the air. But here it seemed some magic spell was cast, and everything was still and silent as the grave.

Sick at heart, Tony contemplated the scene of carnage and destruction for one brief moment. Then he made his way towards the only officer whom he could see, and from him learnt exactly what had happened.

The Major commanding the battery, it appeared, deceived first by the map and then by the fog, had halted his whole battery where he imagined that it was hidden from view. But as soon as the mist had cleared away he found that it was exposed to the fire of the hostile artillery at a range of little more than a mile. The battery had been caught by a hail of shrapnel before it could get into action. Only this one officer remained, and there were but just enough men to work the four guns that were in position. Ammunition, too, was getting very short.

Tony looked at his watch. It was only eight o'clock. From his vague idea of the general plan of battle he knew that the decisive attack would eventually sweep forward over the hill on which he stood. But how soon?

At any moment the enemy might launch a counter-attack and engulf his battery. Its position could hardly have been worse. Owing to the flat top of the hill nothing could be seen from the guns except the three hundred yards immediately in front of them and the high ground a mile away on which the enemy's artillery was posted. The intervening space was hidden. Yet it was impossible to move. Any attempt to go forward to where they could see, or backward to where they would be safe, would be greeted, Tony knew well enough, with a burst of fire which would mean annihilation. Besides, he remembered the stampeding wagon line. The battery was without horses, immobile. To wait patiently for succour was its only hope.

Having ascertained that a man had been posted out in front to give warning of an attack, Tony sat down to await developments with philosophic calm. The fact that he had no right to be there at all, but that his place was with the General, did not concern him in the slightest. It had always been his ambition "to fight a battery in the real thing," as he would himself have phrased it, and he foresaw that he was about to do so with a vengeance. He was distressed by the havoc that he saw, but in all other respects he was content.

For hours nothing happened. The enemy evidently considered that the battery was effectually silenced, and did not deign to waste further ammunition upon it. Then, when Tony had almost fallen asleep, the sentry at the forward crest semaphored in a message--

"Long thick line of infantry advancing: will reach foot of hill in about five minutes. Supports behind." Almost at the same moment an orderly whom Tony recognised as belonging to his General's staff arrived from the rear. Tony seized upon him eagerly.

"Where have you come from?" he demanded.

"From the General, sir. 'E sent me to find you and to tell you to come back."

"Did you pass any of our infantry on your way?"

"Yes, sir. There's a lot coming on. They'll be round the wood in a minute or two."

"Well, go back to them and give any officer this message," said Tony, writing rapidly in his note-book.

"Beg pardon, sir, but that will take me out of my way. I'm the last orderly the General 'as got left, and I was told to find out what 'ad 'appened 'ere, and then to come straight back."

"I don't care a damn what you were told. You go with that message now."

The man hurried off, and Tony walked along the line of guns, saw that they were laid on the crest line in front, and that the fuzes were set at zero. This would have the effect of bursting the shell at the muzzles, and so creating a death-zone of leaden bullets through which the attacking infantry would have to fight their way. Then he took up his post behind an ammunition wagon on the right of the battery, and fixed his eyes on the signaller in front. He felt himself to be in the same state of tingling excitement as when he waited outside a good fox-covert expecting the welcome "Gone away!"

Suddenly the signaller rose, and, crouching low, bolted back towards the guns. Just as he reached them a few isolated soldiers began to appear over the crest in front. As soon as they saw the guns they lay down waiting for support. They were the advanced scouts of a battalion.

A moment afterwards, a thick line of men came in sight. The sun gleamed on their bayonets. There was a shout, and they surged forward towards the battery.

"Three rounds gun fire!" Tony shouted. The four guns went off almost simultaneously, and at once the whole front was enveloped in thick, white smoke from the bursting shell. In spite of diminished detachments the guns were quickly served. Again and once again they spoke within a second of each other.

The smoke cleared slowly, for there was scarcely a breath of wind. Meanwhile the assailants had taken cover, and were beginning to use their rifles. Bullets, hundreds of them, tore the ground in front and clanged against the shields. Tony stepped back a few yards and looked down into the valley behind him. A thin line of skirmishers had almost reached the foot of the hill. His message had been delivered.

He came back to the cover of his wagon. The enemy began to come forward by rushes-a dozen men advancing twenty yards, perhaps.

"Repeat!" said Tony.

Again the guns blazed and roared: again the pall of smoke obscured the view. A long trailing line of infantry began to climb the hill behind him. But the enemy was working round the flanks of the battery and preparing for the final rush. It was a question of whether friend or foe would reach him first. For the second time that day Tony muttered, "It's a race!"

Then, as he saw the whole line rise and charge straight at him--

"Gun fire!" he yelled above the din, knowing that by that order the ammunition would be expended to the last round.

He jumped to the gun nearest him, working the breech with mechanical precision, while the only gunner left in the detachment loaded and fired.

"Last round, sir," came in a hoarse whisper, as Tony slammed the breech and leant back with left arm outstretched ready to swing it open again. In front they could see nothing: the smoke hung like a thick white blanket. Tony drew his revolver and stood up, peering over the shield, expecting every moment to see a line of bayonets emerge.

There was a roar behind. He heard the rush of feet and the rattle of equipment. He was conscious of the smell of sweating bodies and the sight of wild, frenzied faces. Then the charge, arriving just in time, swept past him, a mad irresistible wave of humanity, driving the enemy before it and leaving the guns behind like rocks after the passage of a flood.

Tony fell back over the trail in a dead faint.

* * *

Long afterwards, when the tide of battle had rolled on towards the opposing heights, Tony, pale, grimy, but exultant, started back with the intention of rejoining his General. Halfway down the hill he met him riding up.

Tony turned and walked beside him.

"What's happened here, and where the devil have you been all day?" asked "the Maud," angrily.

"I've been here, sir."

"So it appears. I sent an orderly to find you, and all you did was to despatch him on a message of your own, I understand. We were in urgent need of information as to what had happened up here. You failed to stop this battery, and it was your duty to come straight back and tell me so."

Tony had never seen the placid Maud so angry. He glanced up at him as he sat there bolt upright on his horse looking straight to his front.

"It was my own battery," said Tony. Then, after a pause, he added recklessly, "Would you have come back, sir, if you'd been me?"

The Maud stared past him up the hill. He saw the guns, with the dead and wounded strewn around them, safe. He was a gunner first, a General only afterwards. He hummed a little tune.

"No," he said, "I wouldn't."

* * *

PART III

IN ENEMY HANDS

* * *

SOME EXPERIENCES OF A PRISONER OF WAR

October 15, 1914. Hospital, Bavai, France.-Woke up to find the ward seething with excitement. One of the English wounded had escaped in the night, leaving his greatcoat neatly placed in his bed in such a manner as to suggest a recumbent figure. How he succeeded in evading the attentions of a night-nurse, an R.A.M.C. orderly, a German sentry at the main gate and two others in the courtyard outside the ward, is a complete mystery. The situation for the French hospital authorities is serious. So far, although the Germans are in occupation of the town, have garrisoned it with a company of "Landwehr" and have appointed a "Governor" with a particularly offensive polyglot secretary, they have left the running of the hospital in the hands of the French staff. Bavai has been looted but not sacked, no inhabitants have been shot and no fine inflicted. But what will happen now?

Technically, of course, responsibility for the custody of the patients rests with the Germans, since they have posted sentries at the hospital and in the town. But conventions and technicalities do not count for much in these days. The doctor, five or six nurses, and the lady by whose charity the hospital is maintained hold a conference, animated by many dramatic gestures and an astonishing flow of eloquence. They are torn between fear of the consequences which may recoil upon the hospital and admiration for the daring of the man who stole forth into the rain, unarmed, and without a coat, to face the dangers of an unknown country infested with the enemy-alone.

"Quelle bêtise!" cried one. "Oui, mais quel courage!" answered another. "Si les Allemands l'attrapent, il sera fusillé, sans doute."

It is decided to inform the Governor, and a deputation is formed for the purpose. In less than a quarter of an hour a squad of stolid Teutons arrive and search the hospital from attic to cellar. They even enter the apartments of the nuns, to the horror of our kind old priest. Of course they find nothing. It is by now eight o'clock. At nine the edict is given. In two hours every patient in the hospital who is able to crawl is to be ready to leave. I ask my friend the doctor if he can in any way pretend that I am worse than I am. "Pas possible," he replies, shaking his head sadly.

So it is over-this long period of waiting and hoping; waiting for an advance which never came, hoping where no hope was. Seven weeks have passed since I was brought in here, left behind wounded when the tide of war ebbed back towards Paris, and in that time I have gathered many memories which will never fade. I have seen strong men racked with pain day after day, night after night, until sometimes at last exhausted Nature gave up the struggle and the nurses would come and whisper to me, crossing themselves, "Il est mort, le pauvre. Ah! comme il a souffert." I have realised to the full the compassion of Woman for suffering humanity, irrespective of creed or nationality; and I have known the blessing of morphia. Once, very early in the morning, just as the dawn was beginning to creep in and light with a ghostly dimness the rows of white beds and their restless, groaning occupants, I heard the tinkle of the bell announcing the approach of the priest bearing the Host; and drowsily (for I was under morphia) I watched Extreme Unction being administered to a dying German officer. Death, the overlord, is a great leveller of human passions. The old curé, whose face was that of a medieval saint and in whose kindly eyes there shone a pity akin to the divine, muttered the sacred words with a sincerity of conviction that one could not doubt. A few hours before I had heard his sonorous voice rolling out the Archbishop of Cambrai's prayer for victory: "Seigneur, qui êtes le Dieu des armées et le ma?tre de la vie et de la mort, Vous qui avez toujours aimé la France...."

11 a.m.-We are ready to start. The dining-hall (in times of peace this hospital is a school) is crowded as we are given our last meal. The nuns, the doctor and his wife, the nurses, the village shoemaker who was our barber and who always used to have a reassuring rumour of some sort to retail-all are there to wish us a last sad "Au revoir." They ply us with food and drink, but we are too miserable to take much. Then the word is given-we file out slowly through the courtyard into the sunlit street where two transport wagons are drawn up opposite the gate. There are nineteen French soldiers, two English privates, and myself. Our names are called by a German officer. Those who cannot walk are helped (by their comrades) into the wagons. We three English are carefully searched, but our money is not taken. It is decreed that the Englishmen must be separated by at least two Frenchmen. Does our escort (twenty armed men under a sergeant) fear a combined revolt, I wonder, or is this done merely to annoy us? I suspect the latter. A crowd of inhabitants forms round us, pressing close to say good-bye. Suddenly the German officer notices this and in one second is transformed into a raging beast. He wheels round upon the crowd, waves his stick and pours forth a torrent of abuse. The people cower back against the wall and his anger subsides. It is the first display of German temper that I have seen. To hear women reviled, even in a strange tongue-and for nothing-is horrible.

We start. At the corner I look back regretfully at the hospital where I have received such kindness as I can never forget. From a top window a handkerchief is waving. It is the nurse who, when I was really at my worst, never left my bedside for more than five minutes during two long nights and a day. To her, I think, I owe my life. For a moment the face of the cobbler distinguishes itself from the others in the crowd. He makes himself heard above the rattle of the wagons on the pavée street. "Vous reviendrez après la guerre, mon lieutenant," he shouts.

"Oui, je vous assure-à bient?t," I call back as we turn out into the open country and face the straight poplar-lined road that leads to Maubeuge. Halfway we stop at an estaminet for beer. The prisoners, even the English, are allowed to purchase some. The German sergeant chucks under the chin the attractive-looking French girl who serves him. She smiles, but as he turns his back I note the sudden expression of fierce hate which leaps into her eyes.

It is after 3 p.m. when we reach the outskirts of Maubeuge and cross the drawbridge over the old moat, made, I believe, by Vauban. Inside the town there are many signs of the devastation of war-buildings gutted, whole streets of small houses laid flat in ruins. The pavements are crowded and people throw chocolates and cigarettes to us. German officers, wrapped in their long grey cloaks, swagger about, brushing everyone aside in haughty insolence. From the windows of two or three hospitals French soldiers peer out and wave to us in obvious sympathy. Approaching the railway station we go past the identical spot where, eight weeks ago to the day, the battery detrained. The logs on which we sat to eat our belated breakfast after the long night journey up from Boulogne are still there. Oh! the humiliation of it all; a week in the country, one hour's fighting, seven weeks in hospital, and now-prison.

In the open space outside the station we are drawn up by the pavement. The French are allowed to sit down on the curb; not so we three unfortunate English. On our attempting to do so the sergeant in charge shouts at us and one of the escort threatens us with a bayonet. Some inhabitants who approach us with offers of food and drink are driven off harshly. A crowd of German soldiers, some half-drunk, collects round us. They all know the English word "swine." Pointing us out to each other they use it without stint. One man has a more extended vocabulary of abuse. Having exhausted it he proceeds to recount for our benefit the damnable story that English soldiers use the marlinspike in their clasp-knives to gouge out the eyes of German wounded. We have already heard this allegation made before. The English-speaking secretary of the Governor at Bavai was very fond of it. But he, who was educated and who had lived in London for years, knew, I'm sure, that it was a malicious lie invented by the authorities for the express purpose of exciting the Germans against us. But these men undoubtedly believe it. They produce knives of their own from their boots and threaten us with them. The expression on their faces is that of angry, untamed beasts. And yet, I dare say, at home these very men who now would like to tear us to pieces are really simple, harmless working folk. Such is war.

It is an awkward moment. If either of my compatriots loses his temper (which is not improbable, for the British soldier will not stand insult indefinitely) he will let fly with his tongue or even his fist, in which case we shall all three be put against the nearest wall and shot. So I keep muttering, "For God's sake take no notice; try to look as though you don't hear or understand"-knowing that besides being the safest attitude this will also be the most galling for our revilers. Contemptuous indifference is sometimes a dignified defensive weapon. Finding that we are not to be drawn, the crowd gradually disperses, and for an hour and a half we are kept standing in the gutter. Then another long procession of dejected prisoners winds its way into the yard and we are taken with them into the station. The wait inside is enlivened for me by a conversation with a German N.C.O. who speaks English perfectly. He has lived, he tells me, eighteen years in South Africa and fought for us against the Matabele. Until this war he liked the English, he frankly confesses. Now nothing is too bad for us. We started it, we're the bullies of Europe, it's we who must be crushed. Germany can't be beaten. Napoleon the First couldn't do it. "We Germans," he says, "fight without pay for love of our country, but you are mercenaries; you enlist for money." From motives of personal safety I refrain from making the obvious retort: "On the contrary, we are volunteers-you go into the army because you're dam' well made to."

A diversion is caused by a wounded French soldier who faints, has to be given brandy, and is discovered to be far too bad to travel. Why not have left the poor devil in his hospital? He's surely harmless enough from a military point of view.

6 p.m.-We file across the line on to the other platform. On the way one of the English privates is kicked, hard, from behind by a passing German soldier. His whispered comments to me are unprintable. Our train appears to consist entirely of cattle trucks. Just as I am about to enter one of these in company with some French soldiers, a German captain touches me on the shoulder. "You are an officer, aren't you?" he says in French, and motions me aside. Pointing at me, the sergeant who had brought us from Bavai says something to the officer, the purport of which, I gather, is that his orders were to put me in with the men. Fortunately, however, this captain has gentlemanly instincts; he ignores the sergeant, leads me down to the other end of the platform and deposits me in a second-class carriage with three French officers. We begin to exchange experiences. Two are doctors, the other a captain of Colonial Infantry wounded during the siege of Maubeuge. They tell me that there is another English officer on the train. I now begin to realise that I am hungry and half dead with fatigue. To march eight miles and then to stand upright for nearly three hours, after having walked no more than the length of the hospital ward for weeks, is no joke. The above-mentioned English officer comes in from the next carriage and introduces himself as Major B., cavalry, wounded at the very beginning and put into Maubeuge to recover; of course he was taken prisoner when that place fell. He and the French officers give me food and a blanket, for both of which I am more than grateful. An elderly Landsturm private armed with a loaded rifle and a saw-bayonet occupies one corner of our carriage, so that there is not much room to lie down. We start about 7.30, but I am so over-tired and so cold that I get very little sleep.

October 16.-Woke to find that we had only gone about 20 miles and had not yet reached Charleroi. A long, wearisome day, during which we exhausted our supplies of food. Passed through Namur and Liége but were unable to see signs of the bombardment of either place. In the evening reached Aix, where we were given lukewarm cocoa and sandwiches made of black bread and sausage-particularly nasty. But by this time we were so hungry that anything was welcome. The guard in our carriage, finding that we were not really likely to strangle him if he took his eyes off us for a moment, relaxed considerably, accepted cigarettes, gave us some of his bread, confessed to one of the Frenchmen who could speak a little German that he hated the war and heartily wished that he was home again; finally he put his rifle on the rack and slept as well as any of us.

October 17.-All yesterday and all this morning we passed train after train of reinforcements going to the front; some of the carriages were decorated with evergreens, and nearly all of them were labelled "Paris" in chalk. Many of the men looked very young-hardly more than boys. Several trains, crammed with wounded, overtook us. The sight of English uniform was always enough to attract a crowd at any station where we stopped. I wonder if the inhabitants of the Maori village at Earl's Court experienced the same sensations as I did-sitting there to be stared at, pointed at and not infrequently insulted.

At about 11.30 we were taken out of the train, and locked into a waiting-room with about half a dozen Belgian officers, all wounded, who had arrived from some other direction. An extremely fussy N.C.O. had charge of us and persisted in counting us every ten minutes. Got into another train about 1 p.m. and eventually arrived at our destination, Crefeld, at 1.30. We were taken out of the station almost immediately, marched through a large and rather hostile crowd and put into a tram. In this we went up to the barracks-about two miles. Male inhabitants shook their fists at us, females put out their tongues: so chivalrous!

In spite of the relief of at last being at the end of our journey, there was something terribly depressing in the sound of the heavy gate shutting to behind us. We were first taken up to an office and made to fill in our names, ranks, regiments, and monthly rates of pay on a special form; then put inside the palisade and left to find our way about. There are about sixty French officers here, a dozen or so Belgians (including the commander of Antwerp and his artillery general), and seven English, one of whom is a retired captain who happened to be in Belgium at the outbreak of war and who was arrested as a spy on no evidence whatever. Spent the remainder of the day settling down and writing home. It is a comfort, at any rate, to think that I can at last let people know what has become of me. Comparing notes with the other English here, we discover that they were all wounded early in the War, on the Aisne. We learn for the first time details of the stationary trench warfare into which the campaign is developing and hear all about the German preponderance in heavy artillery. We feed here in the big dining-hall attached to the canteen (in which by the way a great variety of things can be bought, including beer, wine, and tobacco). We live and sleep in the barrack rooms and we have the whole space of the barrack square-200 yards long by about 80 wide-to play about in! Subalterns are paid 60 marks a month, higher ranks 100. Every one is charged 2 marks a day for messing. The unfortunate subaltern, therefore, finds his accounts flat at the end of the month-unless the month has thirty-one days, in which case he owes the Imperial Government 2 marks! Am glad I've got about a fiver with me, which ought to last until I can get more from home. Slept like a log on a bed as hard as iron.

October 18.-Five more English officers arrived this morning, including Major V--. They were all more dead than alive, having spent three days and three nights in a cattle truck, the floor of which was covered with six inches of wet dung; the ammonia fumes had got into their eyes and they could hardly see; they had had practically no food and all through the journey they had been submitted to every conceivable insult. The cattle truck contained fifty-two persons-officers, privates, and civilians. Such treatment is beyond comment. From Major V-- I heard for the first time of the tragic fate of the battery on September 1. He could give no details beyond that it was surprised in bivouac at dawn by eight "dug-in" German guns at 700 yards' range, that it was simply cut to pieces, but that the guns were served to the last, that the hostile batteries were silenced, and, in the end, captured. All the officers were killed or wounded. It's too awful to be ignorant of further particulars. Went to bed more depressed than I have been all these weeks. I daren't think that "Brad"[16] has been killed.

[16] The late Captain E. K. Bradbury, V.C., R.H.A.

October 19.-This morning we were made to parade at 10.30 to be counted; this is to be a daily amusement. The food here might be worse and at present there is plenty of it. Took some exercise round the square-a deadly business. In the afternoon shaved off a month's beard with a cheap German safety razor, which was a painful operation! Ordered some underclothing from the town.

October 20.-Employed a pouring wet day writing many letters, including one to Bavai, though it is questionable if it ever gets there.

October 22.-Two more English officers arrived, one wounded. Both seemed to think that things were going well but neither knew much. This morning the new commandant took over. He looks like an opulent and good-natured butcher disguised as a Hungarian bandsman. Actually, I am informed, he is a retired major of Hussars. In the course of a chatty little discourse at the roll-call parade he informed us that in future we are to be counted at 7.45 a.m. and 10 p.m.; further that alcoholic liquors will no longer be obtainable. Thus we are robbed of two of our luxuries-drink and sleep! Two new arrivals at midday, whose only news is that British troops are now in N.W. Belgium. Football started on the square. The monotonous horror of this life is just beginning to make itself felt on me. The worst part of the whole thing is the total lack of privacy. There is no room, no corner of a room even, where one can go to escape the incessant racket and babble of talk. Reading and writing are practically impossible.

This evening twelve more English arrived. Learned from them of the transfer of our army from the Aisne to Belgium and realised from their accounts the appalling losses that many regiments seem to have had. One of these new-comers told me of Brad's heroic death when "L" was smashed up. To the regiment and to the army his loss is great; to those of us who knew him well and were privileged to serve with him, it is irreparable. In everything he did he set up a standard which all of us envied but none of us could attain. He lived as straight as he rode to hounds-and no man rode straighter. To his brilliant mental gifts he added a conscientiousness, a thoroughness, and a quick grasp of detail which seemed to augur a great future. His was a personality which stamped itself indelibly upon all with whom he came in contact, and the influence for good which he wielded over both officers and men had to be seen to be believed. The men feared him, for he was strict and was no respecter of persons; but they loved him too, for he was always just. By his brother officers he was simply worshipped. He was not a typical British officer, he was far more than that, he was an ideal one. He died as he had lived-nobly. And he was an only son.

October 28.-A vile cold has added to my depression of the last few days. A good many new prisoners have been brought in lately-mostly of the 7th Division, which appears by all accounts to have had an awful doing. The battle W. and N.W. of Lille still rages. A French officer retails a rumour that he had heard before being captured that the Allies had retaken Lille; a Belgian, that the Germans are retiring on the West and that our fleet are doing great execution along the coast.

Am now sharing a room with an infantry captain and three subalterns of the same regiment. We have bought cups and saucers and have tea in our room every afternoon. New regulation that we may only write two letters a month.

October 31.-General von Bissing, commanding the district, inspected the Landsturm battalion here to-day. Afterwards he visited some of the prisoners' rooms. Seeing one English officer who, having only just arrived, was far from clean, he asked him through an interpreter how long he had had his breeches. The officer, who imagined that he was being asked how long the British army had been clad in khaki, answered politely, "Nearly fourteen years!" Whereupon von Bissing was pleased to call our uniform "Dirty-coloured, disgusting, and bad." However, I hear his son is a prisoner in France, so perhaps this undignified vituperation relieves his feelings.

November 1.-The Belgian officers departed to-day for some other camp. Rumours of the arrival of 200 Russians not yet fulfilled. Have bought some books, Tauchnitz edition, and tried to settle down to read. We have started the formation of an English library, which will be a blessing.

November 2.-We have often jokingly said: "We've got English, French, Belgians, and Arabs here-all we want to complete the show is a party of Russians." Well, now we've got them-200 arrived this evening. Such a scene in the canteen before roll-call! The roar of voices, the atmosphere of tobacco, and the pushing crowd in the bar reminded one of the Empire on a boat-race night-minus the drink!

The authorities with their usual thoughtfulness for our comfort have decreed that the English or French and the Russians are to be mixed up in the rooms in approximately equal numbers. So three of us (G--, T--, and myself) migrated to another block this afternoon and installed ourselves in the beds nearest the window before the arrival of our "stable companions." These when they did turn up seemed pleasant enough, but as they could talk no English and only a few words of French, conversation was limited. They could give us no news, having all been prisoners in some other place for two months. One, however, produced a map of Europe and showed us how the German columns were being swept aside-one apparently to Finland, another to Constantinople, and a third to Rome! Evidently an optimist! "Neuf millions" is all the French he knows; it is his estimate of the strength of that portion of the Russian army which is at present mobilised.

November 3.-Letter from home-the first since I left England on August 16. Infinitely cheering; no news, though, owing to fear of the censor, except a few details about the battery on September 1.

November 9.-Overcrowding becoming desperate. A seventh added to our room to-day-a French lieutenant whom we nicknamed Brigadier Gerard, because he's always twirling his moustache in front of the glass. There are so many prisoners here now that we have to have two services for each meal-i.e. breakfast 8 and 9 a.m., lunch 11.45 a.m. and 1.15 p.m. supper 6.45 and 8 p.m. One does a week of each alternately, with the idea presumably that constant change is good for the digestion. But the day consists of fifteen long waking hours all the same. There are moments when I hate all my fellow humans here. A youthful Russian who inhabits this room irritates me almost beyond endurance by singing and whistling the same tune all day long. Poor devil, he's got no books and nothing on earth to do-but if only he'd go and make his noises outside. I find myself unable to fix my mind on anything and sometimes I feel that this life will drive me mad. It's a hell of moral, physical, and mental inactivity. I'd rather do a year here with a room to myself than six months as things are at present.

November 11.-Somebody got a bundle of old Daily Graphics past the censor, I can't think how. As they were the first English papers we'd seen for ages they were most interesting.

November 14.-Howling gale and heavy rain all yesterday and the day before. Hope the German fleet is at sea in it! Have made great friends with Tonnot, the French captain of Colonial Infantry with whom I travelled from Maubeuge. He talks interestingly on a variety of subjects and I am learning a certain amount of French from him. Curious how much more well endowed with the critical spirit the average Frenchman is than the Englishman of a corresponding class. The latter is more inclined to take men and affairs and life for granted.

Am getting anxious about the non-arrival of my parcels. Clothes, books, and tobacco are what I want. Dozens of officers who arrived after me have received parcels. In my saner moments I know that it is purely a matter of chance, but I have a tendency, when day after day a list of names is put up and mine is not amongst them, to grind my teeth in rage and regard it as a personal spite on the part of the German Government. The arrival of letters and parcels is the only event of any importance in this monotonous life. An officer who receives two or three of either on the same day is regarded in much the same light, as, at home, one regards some lucky person who has inherited a fortune. Every pleasure is relative and depends on circumstances. Here, a tin of tobacco and two pairs of pyjamas are joys untold.

November 21.-The same continuous stream of rumours and counter-rumours continues to flow in. Heard this week that Lille had been retaken and that four French corps were marching on Mons. The latter theory borne out by the arrival of some very badly wounded prisoners from the hospital at that place. No confirmation, however. Learnt of the Prime Minister's speech on War loans, in which he stated that the war will not last as long as expected. This is comforting, as he is not given to exaggeration. Perfect weather-dry, frosty, sunny. Long to be on mountains instead of trudging round this damnable square.

November 23.-Immense excitement this evening. Two Russians attempted to escape; they had obtained civilian clothes, passports, and a motor, but were given away by the man whom they had bribed to help them. They now languish in the guardroom. The German authorities spent two hours this evening searching all the rooms, I suppose for money.

November 26.-All the bells in Crefeld ringing this evening and extra editions of the papers announcing the capture of 40,000 Russians. Won't believe it. That's always the tendency-to believe any rumour favourable to us, however wild, and to discredit anything and everything the Germans say.

December 1.-The "Allies" who live in this room have now been more or less educated by our pantomimic signs of disapproval and make less noise. Have bought some more books and read all day except for an hour's walk in the morning and another in the afternoon or evening. Daren't play football owing to the bullet in my neck.

December 15.-The deadly "even tenor of our way" continues. Have now bought a small table and a lamp of my own. Ensconced in the corner behind my bed I can read or work at French in comparative peace. But C-- has had a box of games sent to him-amongst them (horror of horrors!) "Pit." I do draw the line at the room being made into more of a bear-garden than usual by the addition of various strangers who wish to gamble on "Minoru"-and I foresee trouble and unpleasantness over it. Of course it's selfish of me, but there is no other place where I can go for peace and quiet, and-well-we're all inclined to be irritable here. It's a marvel to me that there haven't been more quarrels already.

Wild rumours that Austria is suing for peace with Russia. As usual, no confirmation.

December 18.-To-day Major V-- escaped. Having gone down to the dentist's in the town with two other officers and a sentry, he somehow managed to slip past the latter into the street and find his way out of the town. He speaks German like a native and was wearing a civilian greatcoat. A very sporting effort, as he'll have a bad time if he's caught, I'm afraid. If he can get home and lay our grievances before our authorities there is a chance that, through the American Embassy, the Germans, fearing similar treatment for their prisoners in England, may make things pleasanter for us.

December 19.-Wild scene in the canteen following the announcement that no more tobacco would be sold after the 26th of this month. "The prisoners are being too well treated," is apparently the popular clamour in the town. Fierce scrimmage round the bar to purchase what was left. However, the patriotism of the canteen contractor (who, need I say? is making a fortune out of us) was not equal to his love of gain. He bought up an entire tobacconist's shop, so that we were all able to lay in three or four months' supply.

Rumours that Major V-- had crossed the frontier into Holland. Later, that he had been caught in that country and interned.

Somewhere about this date a score or so of English soldiers arrived here. This was the result of our repeated applications to be allowed to have servants of our own nationality as the Russians and French have. The appearance of these men horrified me. It was not so much that they were thin, white-faced, ragged and dirty, though that was bad enough; but they had a cowed, bullied look such as I have never seen on the faces of British soldiers before and hope never to see again. Apart from what they told us, it was evident from their appearance that for months they had not been able to call their souls their own and that temporarily, at any rate, all the spirit had been knocked out of them. Better food and treatment will doubtless put them right again.

December 25.-Christmas Day is Christmas Day even in prison. In the morning we held a service and sang the proper hymns with zest. At lunch we were given venison (said to be from the Kaiser's preserves) and had some of an enormous plum-pudding which T-- had had sent him. Then suddenly we rose as one man, toasted the King (in water and lemonade) and sang the National Anthem. The French officers followed with the Marseillaise and until that moment I had never realised what a wonderful air it is. Then the Russians, conducted by an aged white-haired colonel, sang their National Hymn quite beautifully. And we all shouted and cheered together.

Into our room this afternoon, when we were all lying on our beds in a state of coma after too liberal a ration of plum-pudding, there burst the N.C.O. of the guard and four armed men. He shouted at us in German and we gathered from his gestures that he was accusing us of looking out of the window and making faces at the sentry. However, as we all went on reading and took not the slightest notice of him, I think we had the best of it. I imagine that, it being Christmas Day, he had "drink taken," as one says in Ireland. We complained to the senior British officer, who saw the commandant about it. This sort of thing is becoming intolerable. The other night the guard entered a room, seized an unfortunate English officer (it is always the English), accused him of having had a light on after hours, although actually he was asleep at the time, and dragged him off to the guardroom, where he spent the night without blankets.

This evening we feasted on a turkey which we had bought and had had cooked for us in the canteen, and more plum-pudding. Afterwards we sang various songs, including "Rule, Britannia" (which the Germans hate more than anything) until roll-call. I think "Auld Lang Syne" produced a choky feeling in the throats of most of us-so many are gone for ever. The authorities, fearing a riot, doubled all the pickets-and it was a cold night!

December 27.-It has been announced that, as a punishment for the escape of Major V--, all smoking will be prohibited from January 2 to 15; all tobacco is to be handed in at 10 a.m. on the 2nd. I wonder if we'll ever see it again. I dread this fortnight's abstention.

December 28.-Received ￡5; also parcels containing food, books, clothes, and tobacco.

January 2, 1915.-Tobacco duly handed in and receipt given for it. Some mild excitement caused over a letter which I had received from F. P--, who is in India, part of which had been censored. The commandant here wanted it back again. Fortunately I had destroyed it. I had not been able to read the censored part, but had gathered from the preceding sentence that it was something about the Indian troops. Wonder what the Boches are after. Anyway I was hauled up before the permanent orderly officer, who is an aged subaltern of at least sixty, known to the French as "l'asperge" because he is long and thin and looks exactly like an asparagus stalk when he's got his helmet on; and to us as "the chemist" because he has rather the air of a suave and elderly member of the Pharmaceutical Society. As a matter of fact, he is a baron! For a German, he was quite polite, believed me when I told him I had destroyed the letter, and seemed relieved when I mentioned that it was dated September 13-which was true.

News gets scarcer and scarcer, German papers emptier and emptier. But there are signs of shortage in the country. No more rolls or white bread for us, for example.

January 5.-Managed to smuggle through the parcels office a tin of 100 cigarettes which had arrived for me, but resisted the temptation to open it. If any one was caught smoking during this fortnight it would mean no more tobacco for any of us for months if not for ever. All the same, I find the privation hard to bear.

January 8.-It has become evident that the authorities do not desire to take further steps in the tobacco question. Yesterday "the chemist" searched various rooms. Entering one he found several Russians smoking-whereupon he left without comment. This was the act of a gentleman. This evening, therefore, we broached my tin of cigarettes. Crouching round the stove we smoked them very carefully, blowing the smoke up the chimney. Rather like school-days and very ridiculous. Tobacco never tasted so good to me.

To-day one of the Russians who was implicated in the attempt to escape some weeks ago returned here. His r?le in the affair had been to stand at the gate and keep watch while the other two slipped out to the motor. All three of them, he says, have been kept handcuffed, in solitary confinement, ever since, and fed only on black bread and weak coffee-and this whilst awaiting trial! Eventually his case was dismissed, as it was not proved that he was attempting to escape. The other two are to undergo imprisonment for six more weeks. They are desperate and want to commit suicide. And this is civilised warfare in the twentieth century!

It is nearly a month since we had any fresh German official communiqués posted up in the dining-hall. Perhaps it is a sign that things are going badly for them. From rumours it appears that Turkey is getting a bad time from Russia-and so is Austria.

The quality of the food is rapidly deteriorating. The bread is black, sour, and hard, with a large proportion of potato flour in it. The meat is generally uneatable. Fortunately supplies are coming fairly regularly from home and we subsist almost entirely on potted meats, tongues, etc.

January 14.-The Russian New Year's Day. Went to their Church service and was greatly impressed by the solemnity of it; also by their beautiful singing. Toasted the Russian army at lunch; much bowing and scraping and a great interchange of compliments.

January 25.-Heard to-day of the second battle of Heligoland and of the sinking of the Blücher-Good. Amused to notice that the German papers claim this fight as a great victory-a Trafalgar, they called it. Prefer to believe the statement of our Admiralty-quoted by the Crefeld paper with many sneering comments and notes of exclamation interspersed.

There is, I think, no doubt that Germany has begun to feel the pinch. The altered manner of our "kindly captors" towards us is remarkable. There is a good deal less of the haughty conqueror about them.

The authorities here are compiling a list of those prisoners who are wounded and unfit for further service. An astonishing number of officers were brought forward by the doctors of each nationality for examination by the German medico! Particulars of our cases were taken down, to be forwarded to Berlin. I fear that, as far as I am concerned, there is not much chance of getting sent home.

February 3.-Permission granted to us to write eight letters a month instead of two. Perhaps this is due to pressure brought to bear since the arrival home of V--. We knew he'd reached England safely some time ago, but have heard no details as to how he did it. Women conductors on the trams in Crefeld now; and Carl, a German waiter, late of the Grosvenor Hotel and at present underling here to the canteen manager, is under orders for the front. Both facts are significant, especially the latter, seeing that the aforesaid Carl is as good a specimen of the physically unfit as one could wish to see.

February 7.-Marked improvement of German manners continues unabated. Carl still here. The civilian who heats the furnace for the bathroom (doubtless an authority!) confesses quite openly that Germany is beaten, that he has been convinced of it for months and believes nothing he sees in the papers.

Our hosts having now condescended to allow us to hire musical instruments, and having even granted us a garret to play them in, we enjoyed quite a pleasant concert this evening. But the crowd and the atmosphere were awful. The orchestra surprisingly good, considering its haphazard formation: and a Russian peasant chorus beautifully rendered.

February 8.-Fine day with a grand feeling of spring in the air. Heading in a German paper: "The enemy takes one of our trenches near La Bassée." But what an admission! Am convinced that at last the German people are beginning to realise what their Government must have known from the time when the first great rush on Paris failed-namely, that there can only be one end to this war for them-defeat.

February 10.-Received a second ￡5 from Cox within three weeks. He must have lost his head on finding me with a balance credit for about the first time in my career.

February 11.-There was a rumour to-night, apparently with some foundation in it, that the first batch of wounded to be exchanged (two English and nine French) are to go on Monday. I continue to hope that I may get away later on, but can't really feel there is much chance, as there is so little permanently wrong with me.

February 12.-The incredible has happened. I'm to be sent home! I hardly dare believe it. This afternoon Major D--, R--, and myself were sent for by the commandant and told to be ready to start at 9 o'clock to-morrow. He further informed us that the authorities knew that our wounds were not very serious, so that he hoped we would realise the clemency of the Imperial Government. We were made to give our word of honour not to take any letters, etc., from prisoners with us. Finally, after an interview with the paymaster, who squared up our accounts, we went through a ceremonious leave-taking with the commandant and "the chemist." Felt quite sorry for the latter; he looks so old and careworn and has lost two sons in the war, I believe. Spent the evening packing my few paltry possessions in a hamper I managed to buy in the canteen. Found it very difficult to conceal my elation from all the poor devils we will leave behind to-morrow. Far too excited to sleep.

February 13, Saturday.-The Germans evidently have been instructed to make things as pleasant as possible for us. A taxi provided at 8.30 and a most suave N.C.O. to accompany us. A large crowd of fellow-prisoners assembled at the gate to see us off. In spite of the depression they all must have felt at watching us go, not one of them showed a sign of it. They were just splendid-French, Russians, and English-and wished us "Good luck," "Bon voyage," and whatever the Slavonic equivalent may be, as though they themselves might be following at any date, instead of having to look forward to months and months more of that awful dreary life.

At 8.35 turned out of the gate for ever.

At the station H-- joined us from the hospital; being partially paralysed he was carried on a stretcher. R.'s kilt caused considerable interest, but the onlookers, evidently knowing our circumstances, were not in the least offensive-very different from four months ago. We were taken charge of by an N.C.O. whom we knew well, as he was employed at the barracks. He became most friendly, aired his small knowledge of English, and continually asked us if we were glad to be going home. What a question! When we changed trains and had about an hour to wait he ordered our lunch for us and saw that we had everything that we wanted. Travelling via Münster we reached Osnabrück at about 4 p.m. and were conveyed in a motor to the hospital. Had thought, ever since last night, that I could never be depressed again, but the sight of the ward with nearly fifty empty beds in it, the smell of iodoform and the whole atmosphere of the place had that effect on all of us for a bit. Found another English officer here, wounded in the head months ago, and still partially paralysed, but recovering. He is to join us. Gathered from listening to his experiences that one might have been in much worse places than Crefeld. No information as to when we are to move on. Later in the evening another officer arrived-one leg shorter than the other as the result of a broken thigh. Found the soft, comfortable hospital bed most pleasant after the hard mattresses of the prison.

February 14.-Spent a long dull day confined to the ward; occasionally we were visited by some of the German wounded, of whom there were many, more or less convalescent, in the hospital. They were quite agreeable. Have noticed that the hate and malice engendered by the authorities against the English manifests itself more amongst those Germans who have not been to the front. Men who have actually been there and have come back wounded are far more inclined to sympathise with fellow-sufferers than to make themselves offensive. Moreover, I take it that by this time the front line troops have acquired a wholesome respect for the British army.

About midday we were all examined by a German doctor. This was nervous work, especially for R-- and myself-we both being far from permanently disabled. However, we seemed to satisfy his requirements. In the evening an aged Teuton in shabby waiter's evening dress came and informed us that we could order anything we liked to eat or drink if we chose to pay for it. Evidently he was acting under instructions to make himself pleasant. Anyway we ordered a good dinner but confined ourselves to beer. Still no news of when we are to start, but presumably it will be soon because of the "blockade," which starts on the 18th.

February 15.-This morning a board of four German doctors made a careful examination of all of us. They came in so unexpectedly that I was obliged surreptitiously to withdraw the plug from the hole in my palate and swallow it! However, I managed to convince them that I could neither eat, drink, nor speak properly, and they passed me without demur. Am sure that I went pale with fright at the prospect of being dragged back to prison again, and perhaps this fact was of assistance to me. There was a long consultation over R--. He was asked if he was capable of instructing troops in musketry; whereupon he proceeded to explain that, in spite of his three years' service, he himself was still under instruction! In the end we were all passed as incapacitated.

We were told this afternoon that we might start to-night, but nothing definite. At 7 p.m. were ordered to be ready in half an hour. Hurried on our specially ordered dinner and split three bottles of wine amongst us. At 7.45 started for the station in motors and were then put on board an ambulance train. The "sitting-up" cases had distinctly the best of it here; we were in comfortable second-class carriages, whereas the others were put in slung-stretchers in cattle trucks. As this same train is to fetch back the exchanged German wounded from Flushing, there was evidently no malice aforethought in this rough-and-ready accommodation; presumably it is the best they can produce. On the train are seven officers, 200 or so N.C.O.'s and men, a few German nurses and Red Cross men, and one civilian doctor. Started at 8.45 and reached the Dutch frontier just after midnight.

February 16.-Had dozed off but woke up when we reached the frontier and was much amused when the Dutch Customs officials came and asked us if we had anything to declare! They even pretended to search our few miserable belongings. Can never forget the kindness of the Dutch both here and everywhere we stopped all through the journey to Flushing. They crowded into the carriages; they showered food, tobacco, cigarettes, sweets, fruit, even English books and papers on us; they forgot nothing. If they'd been our own personal friends they could have done no more for us. Dutch doctors and guards boarded the train at the frontier, and also an English newspaper correspondent with whom we talked for a couple of hours, gradually picking up the thread of all that had happened since we were cut off from the outer world. An exhilarating feeling to have left Germany behind and to be amongst friends again.

Reached Flushing about 10.30 and were welcomed by the British Consul and by several English people over there in connection with Belgian relief work. Their hospitality was unbounded. Had a merry lunch with them in the hotel, and then strolled out to see the town-followed by a large and noisy crowd of school children. But what a joy to be a free man, to be able to go where one likes and do what one likes! Wired home.

In the afternoon the boat which is to take us back arrived from England with the German wounded. The two batches of men were close together on the platform. What a contrast! the Germans, clean, well-cared for, dressed either in comparatively serviceable uniform or new civilian clothes; the English, white-faced, pinched and careworn, in threadbare khaki (some even in tattered French or Belgian uniform) with no buttons, most of them with no hats or badges. At first our men were indignant-they had suffered much, and it was evident to them that the treatment of prisoners in the two countries was very different. But soon the inherent chivalry of the British private soldier overcame his other feelings. The Germans were enemies but they were wounded-cripples for life most of them-and they too were going Home. It formed a bond between the two groups. In five minutes cigarettes were being exchanged and conversation (aided by signs) in full swing.

There was an English corporal, paralysed, lying on a stretcher in the waiting-room. I helped one of the English ladies to take him some tea. She knelt beside him, put the cup to his lips, and, when he had drunk, asked him how he felt. For a moment he didn't answer but merely stared at her with great dark wondering eyes. Then he said slowly: "Are you English?" That was all, just those three words, but they expressed everything-the misery of all the months he had been in foreign hands, his patience, his suffering, and now at long last his infinite content at finding one of his own country-women bending over him. His head dropped wearily back on to the pillow and he closed his eyes; he was happy.

Had dinner at the hotel where we met the doctors who had come over with the Germans and who were to go back with us. Afterwards went on board the boat which, however, was not to start till the morning. To my dying day I shall remember sitting in the saloon and watching the sad procession of two hundred crippled N.C.O.'s and men being brought on board. There were paralysed cases on stretchers, blind men, deaf men, men with an arm or a leg gone, dozens hopelessly lame man?uvring their crutches with difficulty, helping each other, laughing at each other-happy enough for the moment. But oh! the pity of it. What of the future of these maimed and broken men? They are happy now because they're thinking only of to-morrow, but what of the day after? what of the thousands of days after? England is proverbially ungrateful to her lesser kind of heroes as well as to her greater kind of poets. Geniuses have been known to starve in garrets-and so have Balaclava survivors. These men deserve well of their country. Will they be remembered or forgotten?

Went to bed late, again too excited to sleep. Feel at last that it's a reality and not a dream.

February 17.-Woke to find that the boat had started, that it was blowing half a gale, raining hard and that we were in for a vile crossing. Too happy to be ill, however. A large number of Belgian refugees on board. Talked to several of our men. All their stories tallied in essentials. They had been underfed, under-clothed, singled out for all the disagreeable work and all the abuse-because they were English. Watched them playing cards, helping anxious Belgian mothers with their sea-sick children. Listened to their talk and laughter and choruses, of which the most popular was a version of "Tipperary" which stated that the Kaiser would have a long way to go to St. Helena. At intervals, every half-hour or so, a mighty shout would go up, "Are we downhearted?" and all the crutches would rattle on the deck before the crashing answer, "No!"

Disembarked at Folkestone Pier at about six p.m. No fuss, no worry, everything done in perfect order. A buffet on the platform provided us with English tea and English buns (there can be great joy in a common penny bun) served by English ladies. The rain streamed down out of the inky sky as the long ambulance train puffed its way out of the station at 8 p.m. Even the weather was typically English, as if to welcome us! Everything for our comfort had been thought of. In our saloon were flowers, great bunches of violets, and a gramophone. And so at last, just before eleven, we rolled over the darkened Thames and drew up in Charing Cross-Home!

* * *

HENRY

His real name was Henri Roman, but we called him Henry because it was easier to pronounce. His status in the French army was not high-he was a private in the 1st Territorial Regiment; it was his custom, however, when in conversation with unsuspecting strangers, to omit the word Territorial and by merely pointing to the "1" on his képi lead them to suppose that he belonged to the First Regiment of the Line-a rather more distinguished unit than his own. Like ourselves, he was a prisoner of war, and in his capacity of valet de chambre he was, if not perfect, at any rate unusual. We first became conscious of his possibilities as a source of merriment when, owing to the arrival of a fresh batch of prisoners, we were ordered to change our room.

"Je viens avec messieurs," Henry announced simply, and proceeded to help us pack our things. It is a fact that my hair brushes and razor made the journey in one of his trouser pockets, G--'s pipes, a half-empty pot of jam and a face towel in the other.

To us, accustomed to the diffidence of the English soldier in the presence of his officers, it was refreshing to watch Henry enter our room in the afternoon bearing on his shoulder the daily supply of coal. He would lower the large bucket carefully to the ground and then wipe his huge hands on his baggy and discoloured red trousers with the air of a man who has done a hard job of work conscientiously and well. From a pocket, the bottom of which was apparently somewhere in the region of his knee, he would produce a half-smoked and much worn cigar, readjust any loose leaves that might be hanging from it, and then light it with all the care that a connoisseur bestows upon a corona. Having opened the door of the stove to satisfy himself that the fire was "marching well," he would draw up a stool and sit down amongst us for five minutes' rest.

Conversation with him was of course an unequal contest. Our French was weak-his, on the contrary, was powerful-in the sense that an express train is powerful, that is, rushing, noisy, and only to be stopped by signal. He was thirty-five, he told us, and it was obvious, from the way he referred to himself as a père de famille that he considered himself as a man well past the prime of life, looking forward hopefully to a complacent but always industrious old age. He came from Commines, which is north of Lille on the Belgian frontier, and he had worked all his life in a braces factory, for ten hours a day, six days a week, earning thirty to forty francs, which he considered good wages. On the outbreak of war his regiment had formed part of the garrison of Maubeuge, which place, in his opinion, was undoubtedly sold to the enemy. He had spent about a month at a prisoners' camp in Germany, and then had been sent to us with twenty other French soldiers who were to act as our servants and waiters. He confessed that he found the change agreeable because he was better fed and had some work to do. The idleness at the soldiers' camp had bored him. All of which led us to believe that he was that kind of man to whom work is a necessity. Facts proved otherwise.

He used to appear in our room in the morning at any time between seven and half-past. His first objective was the fire. It had happened once that the Russian officers who shared the room with us had in our absence banked the stove up so high over-night that it was still burning on the following morning; in consequence Henry had been saved the trouble of laying and lighting the fire afresh. Just as a terrier who has once seen a cat in a certain place will always take a glance there when passing by, so Henry, hoping daily for a recurrence of such luck, made straight for the stove. He was invariably disappointed; but the action became a habit.

His next act was to go through the formality of waking us. His procedure was to stand at the foot of each bed in turn and place a gigantic hand on some portion of the occupant's anatomy. As soon as the sleeper stirred, Henry would mutter, "Sept heures vingt, mon capitaine" (or "mon lieutenant," as the case might be-he was most punctilious about rank), and pass on to the next bed. The actual time by the clock made no difference. He always said, "Sept heures vingt." All this, as I have stated, was pure formality. His real method of waking us was to make a deafening noise clearing out the grate and laying the fire. Having done this he abandoned us in favour of his own breakfast.

He reappeared about 9 a.m. to give the room what he called un coup de balai-his idiom for a superficial rite which he performed with a soft broom after scattering water freely about the floor. The resultant mess he picked up in his hands and put into the coal-box or pushed under a cupboard if he thought no one was looking. He spent the rest of his time till his dinner hour at eleven in cleaning the boots, making the beds, and pretending to dust things-all the while giving vent to his opinions on life in general and prison life in particular. In the afternoons we seldom saw him after two o'clock, by which time he had brought the coal and washed up the tea things, left dirty since the day before.

Henry possessed neither a handsome face nor a well-knit figure. When he stood upright-which he only did if he had some really impressive anathema to launch against the Germans-he was not more than five feet eight. His skimpy blue blouse disclosed the roundness of his shoulders and accentuated the abnormal length of his arms. The ends of his wide trousers were clipped tight round his ankles, so that his heavy hobnailed boots were displayed in all their vast unshapeliness. In walking he trailed his short legs along, giving one the impression that he had just completed a twenty-mile march and was about to go away and rest for some hours. When we first knew him he had had a scraggy beard of no particular colour, but he startled us one morning by appearing without it, grinning sheepishly, and exposing to view a weak chin which already had a tendency to multiply itself indefinitely. Except on Friday, which was his bath day, his long moustache draggled indiscriminately over the lower part of his face; but after his douche he used to soap the ends and curl them up, giving to his rather foolish countenance a ludicrous expression of semi-martial ferocity. On these occasions he seldom failed to pay us a visit in the evening, shaved, clean, and palpably delighted with himself.

The first time we saw him thus we asked him why he elected to wear his moustache like the Kaiser. For a moment he was disconcerted; then suddenly realising that a joke was intended, he threw back his head and emitted a series of startling guffaws. Being of a simple nature he was easily amused. Jokes about the war and the Germans, however, he considered to be in bad taste. His political philosophy was summed up in his simple phrase, "C'étaient eux" (the Germans) "qui ont voulu la guerre," and on this count alone they stood condemned eternally before God and man. Of history, diplomatic situations, international crises he took no heed. In his eyes the Germans were a race of impoverished brigands for ever casting greedy eyes upon the riches of peaceful France. He told me once in all sincerity that before the war he had never borne a grudge against any man, that he had been content to live at peace with all the world, but that now he was changed-he hated the Germans bitterly-"above all," he added, his voice quivering with impotent rage, "this fat pig of an under-officer who occupies himself with us orderlies. Nom d'un chien!" (his invariable expletive) "one can only think he is put over us on purpose to annoy us."

Poor Henry! I knew the gentleman to whom he referred-a fine type of the fat bully rejoicing in a position of power over unfortunate men who could in no way retaliate.

At first we had accepted Henry gladly as a kind of unconscious buffoon whose absurdities would enliven a few of our many dull hours. But in course of time we discovered other and more pleasing traits in him. He was a devout Catholic and, in his humble fashion, a staunch Republican. One day I asked him why he attached so much importance to that form of government.

"Sous la république, mon capitaine," he replied with dignity, "on est libre."

Free! free to work sixty hours a week for twenty years and then to march off to a war not of his making with but twelve francs in his pocket, leaving a wife and three children behind him to starve!

Like most Frenchmen of his class Henry was thrifty to a degree; I doubt if he spent sixpence a week on himself. With the blind faith of a child he one day confided his savings to me because he was afraid the Germans might search him. By their regulations he was only allowed to have ten marks in his possession at once-the surplus he was supposed to deposit with the paymaster. But I really think he would rather have thrown the money away than done so. He kept a five-franc piece sewn in the lining of his trousers "in case," he informed me, "we get separated when the war is over. Of course you would send me the rest, but when I get back to France I must be able to celebrate my return."

Each week he used to add to the little hoard which I kept for him, knowing not only the total but even what actual coins were there.

Upon occasions he could be courtesy itself. One day a Russian officer came into our room at a moment when Henry was standing idly by the table looking at the pictures in an English magazine. The Russian, mistaking him for a French officer, saluted, bowed, and held out his hand. An English private would have been embarrassed-not so Henry. With that true politeness which always endeavours to prevent others from feeling uncomfortable he returned the salute and the bow and shook the proffered hand! Could tact have gone further?

On Christmas Day we gave him a box of fifty cigars. He was immensely touched and overwhelmingly grateful. Tears sprang to his eyes as he told us that he had never had so many cigars before-even in France.

"Avec ?a," he exclaimed, fingering the box, "je serai content pour un an," and he insisted with charming grace, that we should each accept one then and there.

His musical talent was discovered when some one received a concertina from England. Coming into the room suddenly on the following morning I surprised Henry sitting upon my bed giving what was a quite passable rendering of "Tipperary." In no way abashed, he remained where he was, only ceasing to play for a moment to tell me that the concertina was too small-a toy, in fact. The truth was, I rather think, that his enormous fingers found difficulty in pressing less than two stops at once. He admitted that he had a passion for music, that he had learnt the harmonium from a blind man in Commines, and that he had had an accordion specially made for him in Belgium at a cost of 260 francs which had taken him years to save. He was inclined to turn up his nose at catchy airs and music-hall songs, preferring what he called la grande musique, by which I think he meant opera. Eventually he was given the concertina as a present and went off delighted-doing no more work that day.

The optimism with which Henry had begun his prison life gradually faded away. At one time he was certain that he would be home for Christmas, then for Easter; finally I think he had resigned himself to remaining where he was for life. It was his habit to believe implicitly every rumour that he heard; and since there were seldom less than fifty new ones current every day, he had a busy time retailing them, and was, in consequence, always either buoyed up with false hope or weighed down with unnecessary despair.

But it was at about the end of December that he began to get anxious and worried. Up till then he had been more or less content. His was not a super-martial spirit; he did not pine to be "at them" again nor did he chafe under the restrictions of a life of confinement. He confessed frankly that he was not anxious to fight again, but that when his day's work (!) was done he enjoyed sitting by the stove in the stable "avec les camarades" (the servants lived in the stables) "tandis que chacun raconte sa petite histoire de la guerre."

One day he told me what was on his mind. He had had no news of his family since leaving home five months before. At first he had not worried, knowing that letters took a long time. But an answer was overdue by this time-others had heard from home. "Every day," he said, "there are letters, but none for me." I could proffer sympathy but not, alas! advice, and I hadn't the heart to tell him that Commines was in the thick of the fighting, and had probably been blown to pieces long ago. His wife and children might be safe, but they were almost certainly homeless refugees. From that day on he used often to come and talk to me about his happy life before the war, growing sadder and sadder as the weeks passed and still he had no news.

I shall always remember Henry's pathetic little figure by the gate on the morning I left the prison, his baggy trousers more discoloured than ever, his enormous right hand at the salute, and his lips twisted into that wistful smile of his. I wonder what has happened to his wife and little daughters. I wonder if he or I or any one will ever know.

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Of the contents of this book, Snatty and Five-Four-Eight appeared in Blackwood's, and were both written before the war broke out-a fact which I mention with the selfish object of excusing myself for various technical errors therein: Henry appeared in The New Statesman. My thanks are due to the editors of both these journals for kindly allowing me to republish the stories. The remainder have all appeared in The Cornhill Magazine, to the editor of which I am deeply indebted for his unfailing courtesy and assistance.

Flanders,

November, 1916.

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