"Hier, Sie haben ja nichts genommen" ("Here, you have not taken anything"), he exclaimed, Teuton boorishness veiling the kindliness as he handed me the "souvenir."
A strangely human incident occurred a little later.
A group of Tommies were watching a Boche having a bayoneted hand dressed. He spoke quite good English, but was apparently too frightened to answer any of their sallies. Presently, however, he turned to me with a request that he might be allowed to send a line to his wife to say he was alive.
"'E's young to 'ave a wife, Sister," suggested a lame man, the maintenance of whose large family apparently proved a burden to him.
"'Ow old are yer? You?" he added, addressing the prisoner.
The Hun pulled out an old letter-case and abstracted the portrait of a pretty English-looking girl in a garden arbour.
"My vife," he exclaimed. "She has seventeen years, I nineteen. Ve was married two days when I come away!"
In a moment the hostile crowd round him was turned to one of sympathisers. "Poor beggar! After all, he probably doesn't want to fight any more than we do," said the lame man.
