offered to take his
prisoners in, but he insisted upon carrying on. He got very weak
from loss of blood after a bit, and I had two of the Boches carry
him to the nearest dressing station, where they took care of him. I
have often wondered whether the poor chap "clicked" it.

Eventually I got my batch of prisoners back to headquarters and
turned them over. I want to say a word right here as to the
treatment of the German prisoners by the British. In spite of the
verified stories of the brutality shown to the Allied prisoners by
the Hun, the English and French have too much humanity to
retaliate. Time and again I have seen British soldiers who were
bringing in Germans stop and spend their own scanty pocket money
for their captives' comfort. I have done it myself.

Almost inevitably the Boche prisoners were expecting harsh
treatment. I found several who said that they had been told by
their officers that they would be skinned alive if they surrendered
to the English. They believed it, and you could hardly blame the
poor devils for being scared.

Whenever we were taking prisoners back, we always, unless we were
in too much of a hurry, took them to the nearest canteen run by the
Y.M.C.A. or by one of the artillery companies, and here we would
buy English or American fags. And believe me, they liked them. Any
one who has smoked the tobacco issued to the German army could
almost understand a soldier surrendering just to get away from it.

Usually, too, we bought bread and sweets, if we could stand the
price. The Heinies would bolt the food down as though they were
half starved. And it was perfectly clear from the way they went
after the luxuries that they got little more than the hard
necessities of army fare.

At the battle of High Wood the prisoners we took ran largely to
very young fellows and to men of fifty or over. Some of the
youngsters said they were only seventeen and they looked not over
fifteen. Many of them had never shaved.

I think the sight of those war-worn boys, haggard and hard,
already touched with cruelty and blood lust, brought home to me
closer than ever before what a hellish thing war is, and how keenly
Germany must be suffering, along with the rest of us.

CHAPTER XII

I BECOME A BOMBER

When I found my battalion, the battle of High Wood had pretty well
quieted down. We had taken the position we went after, and the
fighting was going on to the north and beyond the Wood. The Big
Pus