It was a war
correspondent, young Valentine Williams, afterward a very gallant
officer in the Irish Guards who gave the orders in fluent and incisive
German. He began with a hoarse shout of "Achtung!" and that old word
of command had an electrical effect on many of the men. Even those who
had seemed asleep staggered to their feet and stood at attention. The
habit of discipline was part of their very life, and men almost dead
strove to obey.
The non-commissioned officers formed parties to draw and distribute
the rations, and then those prisoners clutched at hunks of bread and
ate in a famished way, like starved beasts. Some of them had been four
days hungry, cut off from their supplies by our barrage fire, and
intense hunger gave them a kind of vitality when food appeared. The
sight of that mass of men reduced to such depths of human misery was
horrible. One had no hate in one's heart for them then.
"Poor devils!" said an officer with me. "Poor beasts! Here we see the
`glory' of war! the `romance' of war!"
I spoke to some of them in bad German, and understood their answer.
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