EIGHTEEN-YEAR OLD PRISONERS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3199, 25 September 1917, Page 8

EIGHTEEN-YEAR OLD PRISONERS

A "BAG" FROM THE GERMAN TRENCHES GLAD TO BE CAPTURED [The following article, by R. F. Eees, has beeen authorised by the War Office for publication, and forwarded on. bv the Eoyal Colonial Institute.] \Ve had brought them in from one of their "strong points" in a quarry. There were twenty-five of them, fully armed, and they had a machine-gun. Yet the v,;hole lot had surrendered without any trouble at nil to a laughing subaltern with an empty revolver as his only weapon. Tor the most part they were weedy persons. Seven wore spectacles, and not one was nineteen years of age. That they were glad to ]m> safe in the British lines is to nut it mildly. ■ One fellow—he was evidently a 6tudent,' Ms uniform didn't fit him, and he wore great, horn-rimmed glasses—showed us the entrance papers for the ' examination for which he.viould have sat had uot the Mailed Fist hauled him away from his desk. He was mightily wroth at being made to fipht. He had little English, but ho made it plain to us that he v;as no soldier—oh, wit it was so evident that nono of them were—but a man of peace. He did not want to kill. He par; ticnlarly did not want to "be killed. He was very, very candid about it all. \Ve gave them food, nnd they became as ravenous ns wolves! We gave them cigarettes, and they were our friends for life. It was very'significant that while each had the huge pipe which is the, joy of the German student's heart, not one of them had any tobacco. They told us, while thoy puffed our "Woodbines," how they had been starved and threatened and beaten. They were nothing but boys, and they had no stomach for fighting. The lad with the horn spectacles waxed very eloquent when he had been fed. He pulled out letters from home and translated them to us in his funny 'Englishletters that told 'of want and discontent and bitter weariness, and of the appearance of patriotism \vhich was demanded of the people almost at the point of the bayonet. Jinking all due allowances for the prisoner's natural desire to propitiate his captors, there v>;as no evading the very evident fnct—theso boys, these "soK diers of the Fatherland." were in our own virile slang "fed to the back teeth." They.;had been pounded all night by our guns. In the cold gloom ot dawn they had eeen our men advancing across the green fields, bavonpts dashing in the sunlight, the mon laughing and cheering as they- went. Thoy had wondered what sort of men these were who w«at to war ns though it were a same. Their "strong point" had been a farce. A few shots came from it oavly in the game, but for thn most part all they vjnnted was to hide, to e«y\po those torrible ranks of steel thnt \ypre bearing down upon them.' So they lav quiet, mid when the lull came they tied a handkerchief to a bayonet and"waited in lie fetched in. They rushed to meet their captor, tried to shake hands, cheered him! On tho. way to our linos they wonted to run, and their o\tn shells scared them horribly. I could not help thinking of a party of ours, a sergeant and four men, whose bodies we had found about r,heir dismantled gun two days before. They had kept their "strong point." -They Und rendered their sun useless beforo it could fall into enemy hands; "Tho Boche gun wo captured was in full vcorking order, with its full complement of ammunition! Wo s ( cnt off our twenty-five to Brigade H.Q., and they cheered us as they i.;ent. It wns naif comic, half pathetic, and as we listened to them nono of us wondered at the feeling of our men that (hey have tho upper lian/1. No one Mippows that, nil German soldiers are liko'this; they havo many real fighting men Soft ret, and remorseless machinery for driving them withal: but if the youth of Germany look nt tho wnr in this v/ay her prospects would seem pretty gloomy.

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