Two hours later he returned with a loaf of bread and a packet of lard. It seemed a banquet, and for the rest of our stay he brought us, if not a living, at any rate an existing ration, and on the day that we moved he even came on to the station carrying a sack of provisions. Our train journey provided an admirable example of official negligences. For officialdom is the same all the world over. In England it was like a game of “Old Maid”; and so it was here. To the commandant at Marchiennes eight prisoners were only so many cards to be got rid of as quickly as possible. As soon as they had been put in a train, and the requisite number of buff sheets dispatched, his job was at an end. What happened in the course of transmission mattered not at all. And so the eight of us, with two German sentries, were put in a train at Marchiennes at ten o’clock on a Monday morning. We had rations for one day, and we reached Karlsruhe, our destination, at 7 p.m. on the Thursday. In this respect our experience is that of every other prisoner that I have met; only we, by being a small party, fared better than most. First of all, in regard to our sentries. As there were so few of us, we soon managed to get on friendly terms with them. They were a delightful couple. One of them was medically unfit, and had never been in the trenches. He was mortally afraid of his own rifle, and at the first opportunity unloaded it. The responsibility of a live round in the breech was too great. The other was old and kindly, with the Iron Cross; and like all men who have seen war, loathed it thoroughly. “Englander and German,” he said, “trenches, ah, blutig; capout; here alles kameraden; krieg, nix mehr.” And at every station he tried to get food out of the authorities. He was not very successful. Only once, at Louvain, did he manage to raise some bully beef and bread, and if we had had to rely on official largess, we should have been very thin by the time we reached Karlsruhe. But luckily, through being a small party, we were able to benefit from the generosity of the Belgian civilians at a small village called Bout-Merveille, who showered on us bread and eggs and cigarettes. But for all that the journey was tedious beyond words. We were crowded in a third-class carriage, with unpadded seats. We had nothing to read. Wherever the train stopped at a siding it remained there for any period from four to seven hours; it did all its movement by night, and for at least ten hours of daylight presented us with a stationary landscape. It seemed as though it would never end. Nor did our arrival in Germany afford any diversion. Another traditional conception “went west.” We had all vaguely expected to receive some insult or brutality at the hands of the civilian population. But no old men spat on us, no hectic women attacked us with their hair-pins. Instead of that they regarded us with a friendly curiosity.