"They" had evidently given orders that the about-to-be-exchanged prisoners were to be treated with kindness, just as "They" on a former occasion had given orders that British wounded prisoners, officers and men, were to be treated with a special insolence and brutality.
This affectation of kindness now at the very last moment, the hypocritical pretence, was more repellent than even the insolence of the Rittmeister Niebuhr.
There was, however, one member of the Board whose kindness was really genuine. This was the senior doctor in civilian clothes.
When I went along to the room where the papers had to be signed, he made me sit in his arm-chair and examined my head. I cannot explain the difference between his manner and that of the others. Kindness, in the others so evidently sham, official, and by order, with him was second nature.
"You will get well, quite well in time," he said, "but it will be very long."
"Let me take your arm, you must not fall on the slippery floor. You might hurt yourself badly and not be able to leave us to-night."
Even if I had not understood the German words, there was no misunderstanding the sympathy in the tone of his voice.
The word of deliverance came that evening while we were at dinner. We were told that two motor-cars and an ambulance waited at the door, and in a very few minutes we started off for the station. As the night was dark and wet, there was some delay before the cars could find the platform our train was due to start from. We drove into the station by a goods entrance, and the cars halted quite near the train. In addition to ourselves, a large party of wounded soldiers, about 120 of them, were bound for the frontier.
As I made my way slowly along the platform I saw several of these poor fellows standing about on crutches, one or two of whom I had met before at Cambrai. They were very cheery, and it was cheering to see them and hear the familiar query, "Are we downhearted?" with its answering roar from the train-load of cripples. But the thin pale faces and ragged clothes bore witness to the misery from which they, the lucky ones, were now to be released.
After waiting for nearly two hours, a German officer of high rank came along to make a final inspection. He asked us if we had any complaints to make, and again repeated the hypocritical phrase, "We want you to go back to England contented." And at last the train moved off. Osnabrück is only forty miles from the frontier. The suspense and worry of the day had told on all of us, and when the much-longed-for moment arrived, and the train actually crossed the frontier, we had all fallen asleep.