GERMAN PRISONERS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 95, 15 January 1918, Page 6

GERMAN PRISONERS

BAVARIAN TROOPS' ILL-FEELING. One machine-gunner of the 2OOth Infantry iuignneiii. naa win we clays m tlie crater wnere lie was captured, writes a correspondent on the \i esiern ironi in cicscnuing liio lypes of prisoners captured auriitg the rasschondacle liidge liatcie. He was a thin, pale votiui 01 Si!,- still a little bewildered by His arrival in tiie liritish lines. Ho said That his battalion had had orders to hold its mauhine-gun posts at all costs, and the ellort resulted in the forward companies being nearly externuniNouo of them expected that Germany would win the war, and it was common talk that peace of some kind would be arrived at by the end" of tho year. The Bavarians make the usual allegations of unfair treatment. They give the impression that the ill-fctiling between Prussian and Bavarian troops is much more acute, and there appears, to be good foundation for this behel. Some of these Bavarian troops, who bad arrived only a few days before from another part of the front after a long period of rest, and who were imraocliately thrown into the front line, declared'that they were being sacrificed. A battalion commander was told that he would be shot if ho came into the front line. During the march from their billets the men kept straggling, and the officers who rounded them up and ordered the column to keep formation were jeered at without any attempt being made to punish the offenders. , As regards the condition of the prisoners, the. average physique is good. Many weedy, unfit-looking youths were, in the little procession, of captives. Some regiments had recently boon issued a fresh kit, and the men wore new clothes, and even had new cooking apparatus, some of which were still sealed as they were received from the depot A now leather gas mask, folded compactly in a cylindrical metal tin slung across the shoulder, was worn by nearly all the prisoners, and hundreds of' them could be picked up on the battlefield. The cumbersome shrapnel helmets were in some instances neatly covered with khaki, another idea copied from us. Many of the officers, particularly from the Guards, wero Quito smart, trim and gloved. Their uniforms were clean and well keptsome had been in billets until the day before the battle, and bad not time to become stained and muddy berore falling into'our hands.