Energy books

There were fourteen hundred German prisoners awaiting entrainment, a
mass of slate-gray men lying on the wet earth in huddled heaps of
misery, while a few of our fresh-faced Tommies stood among them with
fixed bayonets. They were the men who had surrendered from deep
dugouts in the trenches between us and Loos and from the cellars of
Loos itself. They had seen many of their comrades bayoneted. Some of
them had shrieked for mercy. Others had not shrieked, having no power
of sound in their throats, but had shrunk back at the sight of
glinting bayonets, with an animal fear of death. Now, all that was a
nightmare memory, and they were out of it all until the war should
end, next year, the year after, the year after that--who could tell?
They had been soaked to the skin in the night and their gray uniforms
were still soddened. Many of them were sleeping, in huddled, grotesque
postures, like dead men, some lying on their stomachs, face downward.
Others were awake, sitting hunched up, with drooping heads and a
beaten, exhausted look.


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