ch.

"Tell them they shall be excellently treated," said he, seizing my
elbow. "When we shall have won this war the British will no longer
be able to force natives of India to fight their battles for them."

I judged it well to repeat that word for word. There are over ten
applicants for every vacancy in such a regiment as ours, and until
Ranjoor Singh ordered our surrender, we were all free men--free
givers of our best; whereas the Germans about us were all
conscripts. The comparison did no harm.

We saw no more of our wounded until some of them were returned to us
healed, weeks later; but from them we learned that their treatment
had been good. With us, however, it was not so, in spite of the
promise the German officer had made. We were hustled along a wide
trench, and taken over by another guard, not very numerous but
brutal, who kicked us without excuse. As we went the trenches were
under fire all the time from the British artillery. The guards swore
it was our surrender that had drawn the fire, and belabored us the
more on that account.

At the rear of the German lines we were herded in a quarry lest we
observe too much, and it was not until after dark that we were given
half a loaf of bread apiece. Then, without time to eat that which
had been given to us, we were driven off into the darkness. First,
however, they took our goatskin overcoats away, saying they were too
good to be worn by savages. A non-commissioned officer, who could
speak good English, was sent for to explain that point to us.

After an hour's march through the dark we were herded into some
cattle trucks that stood on a siding behind some trees. The trucks
did not smell of cattle, but of foul garments and unwashed men. Two
armed German infantrymen were locked into each truck with us, and
the pair in the truck in which I was drove us in a crowd to the
farther end, claiming an entire half for themselves. It was true
that we stank, for we had been many days and nights without
opportunity to get clean; yet they offered us no means of washing--only
abuse. I have seen German prisoners allowed to wash before they
had been ten minutes behind the British lines.

We were five days in that train, sahib--five days and nights. Our
guards were fed at regular intervals, but not we. Once or twice a
day they brought us a bucket of water from which we were bidden
drink in a great hurry while the train waited; yet often the train
waited hours on sidings and