The men, guarded by sentinels, were at that time herded together on some waste land surrounded by barbed wire; shelter there was none. We dug ourselves holes in the sand as best we could. Some green branches formed a roof; and there, exposed to the rain, we remained night and day, even without straw to lie on or coverings to protect us from the severity of the nights, which were already very cold. The wounded were visited from time to time by a German army doctor; there being no hospital, they suffered still more from the exposure than their comrades did. Twice a day, at a fixed hour, officers and men filed before the doors of the kitchens. For some time even a French General was to be seen, joining this long line of starving people. He had come to receive with his own hands the bowl that the German cooks refused to give to any but himself. However, a room had been prepared for him in some neighbouring barracks. The men slept in the open. The tents were not put up till much later; but at the end of a fortnight or three weeks, after an American official had visited the camp, they consented to house the prisoners in stables, considered too unhealthy for horses! Our soldiers were frequently twelve in a box. The Germans, who seem able to foresee everything, did not attach sufficient importance to the question of prisoners, or perhaps imagined these arrangements would do well enough for the two months the war was to last. Now there came a day when the German General, who commanded the camp, arrived to visit the first prisoners. Of a height above the average, broad-shouldered and upright, he must have been in his time a fine man, one to command the respect of his men. His head was bent with age and he kept it sunk between his shoulders like a wrestler. His light blue eyes, which must have been piercing when he was younger, had become dulled, but they were still penetrating enough and showed that the years had not weakened his will when occasionally they shone suspicious and hard from under his bushy brows. A thick grey moustache hid his lips. On his left cheek was a deep scar, made, I was told, by a French bullet in 1870. His bearing was noble, his step slow and dignified. He went about, whip in hand, followed by two bloodhounds that kept close to his heels. The General had for the French a fierce hatred, which he showed whenever an occasion arose. Perhaps he had suffered in the campaign of ’70, and his wound had soured him; perhaps also his education, directed by those above him, had taught him to detest our race. As he was too old for active service he was given the organisation and direction of a concentration camp.