One afternoon I was asked to go and speak to some prisoners at the Imperial (No. —— General Hospital), where Miss A—— is now working. A young "Freiwillige" of 19 immediately inquired: "What about Paris?"
"What do you mean?" I asked, astonished.
"When did we take it?" was the somewhat surprising reply.
On the whole, in spite of the rigorous discipline that makes it necessary for German officers to go behind their men to save their own skins and goad on their victims; in spite of the fact that they seem to be treated like cattle and have been found chained to their machine-guns, as a whole (and probably as the outcome of the patriotism that is inculcated into every German from his earliest days) they seem loyal to their superiors; and, relieved though they appear at being captured, are not garrulous on the score of the reign of terrorism from which they have escaped. For not the most warlike can covet the privilege of being driven in massed formation, over heaped-up corpses, into the face of the enemy's fire that literally mows them down like hay. It turns even our own machine-gun men sick.
As we were about to turn in, ten funerals went up without even an escort, as the R.A.M.C. orderlies are too engrossed with their duties towards the living to be spared.
So die the flower of English manhood! Buried in their deal boards in French clay, with only a French grave-digger or two and a cluster of children playing round the massive gates to see them to their last resting-place.
Well might the bells of Shoreditch peal, muffled, on All Saints' Day!
November 9th. The autumn leaves are falling. Before me sit a group of convalescents in the courtyard, basking in what there is of mellow sunlight—awaiting their turn for baths. To say they look dejected is too mild. There is a look of weariness in their eyes that appals one. There is no mistaking a man from the front. They all have it—the trench-haunted look.
"Any man who says he wants to go back is a liar," say most. "It isn't fighting; it's murder, you see." And one is left all the more astounded at the heroism with which they face the inevitable when it comes to returning to the front, the unanimity of their: "Are we down-hearted? Never!" as they march off.
On the whole there is wonderfully little "swinging the lead" or "dodging the column," as the men themselves call malingering; and though some of the medical officers were apt to look upon the early cases of trench feet as much ado about nothing, it has since been found that the acutest pain is often present when all swelling has subsided.