At Gütersloh station we slowly passed a train conveying a German battalion towards the West front. We were able to examine the men well. This particular battalion consisted of very fine looking men, but there was no "Joy in the War" expression, as the German papers call it, on their faces, and they were not singing or shouting the incessant repertoire of the front-going German soldier. In fact they looked resigned to their fate, and took very little notice of us. Of course we talked to each other about "Kanonen Futter" for the benefit of the guards in our carriage.
On clearing out of Gütersloh we decided to have a meal. As we had prepared for two or three days in the train if necessary, we had plenty of food with us. It was with great curiosity that we covertly watched our German guards when we produced white bread and tinned beef sent from England. It was evidently a great surprise for them, and they could not help showing their astonishment in their faces. It did not look to them as if England was starving if white bread could still be made, and as for the meat, they had not seen so much during a whole week as we each proposed to eat at one meal.
They had had a meal themselves just before we began ours, so we had been able to estimate what had been given them as their rations. It was very scanty and the small quantity of bread was exceedingly poor looking. In the hopes of getting them to talk a bit, we offered them some beef and a little bread. They accepted with alacrity and became friendly from that moment, telling us all sorts of things that interested us exceedingly.
Apparently, they in common with the majority of Germans, had mistrusted and even feared their English prisoners up till then. Very probably they had all been warned to be suspicious of us, and given to understand that we might overpower them at any moment and escape from the train. There must have been some such fear in the minds of the senior German officers, as there were machine guns on the train in addition to four hundred armed soldiers.
The under-officer told me that he had been wounded twice and been on the Russian front for a very long spell. He had also been on the West front in 1914, and I discovered that he had been in an attack on the very trenches occupied by my brigade near the Chemin des Dames on the Aisne. He had no hesitation in saying which was the nastiest front. He was absolutely fed up with the war, as were the others in the carriage. They asked us when we thought the war would end, and out of principle we said in a year to two years' time. I was often asked the same question while at Crefeld and always answered—"a year or more." This seemed to depress them and they used to blame England for being the cause of the war going on so long. Nearly every day I went to the canteen, and, according to my usual custom, talked to the German soldiers doing duty as salesmen there.
The war was always the subject of conversation and I generally asked them, laughingly, when the great promised defeat of England was going to come off. One day, one of them became quite serious and leant across the counter to me and said in a low tone so that only I could hear—"Germany will never defeat England." As an afterthought he added, "but England can never defeat Germany." I laughed and told him to wait.
It was extremely interesting to observe the gradual taming of the Boche.
In 1914 he was intoxicated with victories actual and prospective; 1915, confident but a little more calm; the big talk of capturing London, etc., had died down by then; 1916, general depression, and towards the end of the year actual and open fear for the future and hate of the war was to be observed among the soldiers and civilians of the lower orders.
By the Spring of 1917, real anxiety about the coming summer's fighting began to be evident, which was partially relieved by the events in Russia and the great promises and hopes held out to them by the submarine warfare.
Their behaviour towards us followed the same gradual scale. At first, bullying, truculent and brutal, they became more docile as time went on, until when we left Crefeld in May 1917, their behaviour was not so far removed from what one had a right to expect from prison guards and officials towards their officer prisoners.