One little fellow, Mandelbrot, curiously combined respect and authority in his behaviour to us. He was an incorrigible disciplinarian and never allowed any liberties. But if he had to address a British officer, whatever the officer’s rank, he would click his heels together and stand to attention. The first ten days at Holzminden were chaos itself. Even Niemeyer was unable to exert himself as actively inimical in the complete disorganisation. He was too busily engaged in strafing his own staff. Moreover, he was as yet only Camp Officer. The doddering old Commandant still reigned and Niemeyer’s time was largely spent in interposing his unwelcome oar into conversations between the Commandant and an aggrieved senior British officer. The English, moreover, were at sixes and sevens amongst themselves. It was frankly a struggle for food. Schwarmstedt, as stated, had brought very few tins. We from Baden had none. The German commissariat was of course execrable. There was no “common box” or relief store of tins and food for new-comers such as had been instituted in the prosperous days of Crefeld and Gütersloh, when the odd captives straggled in from the battle of the Somme and found plenty awaiting them. Parcels had in many cases been already countermanded on the strength of the Holland rumour, in others they were in process of being diverted from Schwarmstedt, and this would probably be a matter of weeks. For the first time since 1914 the old campaigners were casting about for their next meal. It was a new experience. The German canteen, of course, had nothing edible for sale. There was barely fuel enough for our few stoves; the baths were not yet open; the beds were hard and rocky. It needed but a brief acquaintanceship with the Xth Corps to be able to put one’s finger on the _fons et origo mali_, which went much deeper than the doddering Commandant and his graceless Lieutenant. Everything that was unpleasant in our new surroundings had been hatched, we might be sure, at H.Q. from the brain of von Hänisch, the fox, _General Kommandierende_ of the Corps. Now von Hänisch, besides being by nature fox-like, had got a bad hammering from the English on the Somme, and had lost many men, and his field command into the bargain; and now, with a third or so of the British officer prisoners-of-war in Germany under his amiable tutelage, he was not the man to waste any time in getting back on the country which had been the means of breaking him.