Drawn up outside another of the unpainted sheds, we saw two men whose appearance instantly contrasted with the half slouch of those about them.
"You're a regular, aren't you?" I asked a tall, powerfully built man who wore the chevrons of a sergeant.
"Yes," he replied. "The boys here are just new recruits."
I caught the sympathy in his voice when he spoke of "the boys." His very manner, his stiff, unyielding, soldierly bearing, made me understand better than ever before what Kipling meant when he called the British soldier a king. More than ever one marveled at the system that takes men out of the London gutters and transforms them into regulars, into a sergeant who could stand amid the humiliation of that prison camp and not once forget that he was a soldier of England. That single man was one of the greatest tributes to the regular army of England that I have ever seen.
I found myself talking to a browned, deep-chested sailor, whose red insignia told me he was a gunner's mate.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, surprised, not knowing how a man from a war ship could have been made a prisoner.
"I was with one of the English naval guns at Antwerp," he said. Then he made his complaint. It was different from the way the younger men had talked, based on a different thing, a different way of thinking; in fact, his one way—the question of discipline.
"The Germans expect me to keep good discipline here. I try to, but if they would feed us a little better, it would be easier. Every so often the lads kick on the grub."
"It isn't really bad," I said to him. "I tasted some of it."
His manner was earnest. I knew he was sincere.