But gloomy as the picture was, it was made still darker by the treachery of our own men. There was no trained hospital staff at first, and it was necessary to take for orderlies men who could speak Russian. The only prisoners who fulfilled this qualification were Austrian and Hungarian Jews. They could speak Russian, partly because a Jew can always learn a language when it is likely to bring him any advantage, but also because they were the first to desert and had been the longest in captivity. Where one Jew comes, others follow, and in time practically all the orderly work was in their hands. Whatever the patients brought with them to hospital was stolen as a matter of course. Their fine new uniforms were taken away on a pretence that they were to be disinfected, but they were never brought back. The Jews sold them, and gave the patients that recovered torn and shabby garments for which there was no sale. They ate the nourishing rations provided for the sick, and left their patients to starve. The biggest scoundrel was a man called Flesch. Sometimes Flesch would load a sledge with Red Cross stores, such as rugs or warm underclothing, drive off to the town and sell to the Russians the things of which his own comrades stood in such bitter need. By some queer stroke of cunning he managed to keep the orderlies in his hospital under subjection, and no one stole without his licence. Honour among thieves! When a man died, Flesch was fetched to dispose of his effects, and a certain ritual was always observed in these affairs. If he left much money, Flesch would say a long prayer for his soul; if little, he would turn away with a sneer and say that as he had left only a few kopecks, a short paternoster would be enough for him. The Catholics may find what consolation they can in the circumstance that this master rogue was of their Church, although he was undoubtedly of Jewish descent. There were horrible ghoulish stories at the hospitals of patients who did not die quickly enough, and of orderlies hovering round their bed, waiting for them to breathe their last, and then suddenly losing patience, rushing in on them and snatching their money from them while they still lived, or even taking their pillow and hastening their end by suffocation. Now and again the patients resisted, and, with a strength born of despair, would just be able to throw off their assailants before they died. And some recovered and lived to remember, as through the mists of an awful dream, in what terrors Death can be arrayed. [SN: GERMAN DOCTORS]