There were here at Vehnmoor, as there had been at Giessen, a certain few of our own men who traded on the misfortunes of their own comrades. This man was the worst of them all. He was a sergeant-major in a certain famous regiment of the line in the British Army. He was a fair sample of that worst type which the army system so often delegates authority to--and complains because that authority does not meet with the respect it should on the part of its victims. He excelled in all the arts of the sycophant: The pleasure of the guards was his delight, their displeasure, his poignant grief. He assumed the authority of his rank with us, he reported the slightest of misdemeanours amongst us to the guards and was instrumental in having many punished. These and other things gave him and others of his kidney the run of the main grounds so that they could stretch their legs and have some variety in their lives. Such liberty was there for any man who would do as they did. None of us were safe from these traitors. The sergeant major in particular, spied on us, reporting all criticisms of our guards and other things German. We raged. He had for his virtue a small room to himself in a corner of the hut. When parcels came from England, addressed to the senior non-commissioned officer of his regiment, for him to distribute; he called the guards in. Shortly they went out with their coats bulging suspiciously. We were then called to receive ours whilst he stood over, bullying us with all the abusive "chatter" which the British service so well teaches. And afterward we watched covertly, with all the cunning of the oppressed, and saw him receive other stealthy favours from the guards that were not within his arrangement with the Commandant. So one of his own men who had a certain legal learning took down all these facts as I have recited them and calling us together, bade us sign our names in evidence of so foul a treachery. Which we gladly did. And it was and is the prayer of all that when the gates of the prison camps roll back this document will get to the War Office and there receive the attention it deserves. My comrades in misfortune here told me of another such a man who had gone away just before my arrival at this camp. He, too, was a sergeant-major of a line regiment in the old army. I had known him in the old days in India. In his own regiment he was never known by his own name, but instead by this one: "The dirty bad man." No one ever called him anything else when referring to him. That was his former record and this is what he did here to keep the memory of it green. He was instrumental in having fixed on us one of the most terrible of army punishments. It appears that some time before one of our men had broken some petty rule of discipline and the Germans had asked the sergeant-major what the punishment was in our army for such a "crime," as all offences are termed in the army.