German Prisoners.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 10 January 1918, Page 4

German Prisoners.

TYPES OF RECENT CAPTURES. BAVARIAN TROOPS' ILLPEELING. One machine-gunner of the 200 th Infantry Regiment, had lain five days in the crater where he was captured, writes a correspondent on the western front in describing the types of prisoners captured during the Passchendaele Ridge battle. He was a thin, pale youth of 21, still a little by his arrival in the British lines. He said that his battalion had had orders to hold its machine-gun posts at all costs, and the effort resulted in the forward companies being nearly exterminated. None of them expected that Germany would win the war, end it was common talk that peace of some kinu would be arrived at by the end of the year. The Bavarians made the usual allegations of unfair treatment. They give the impression that the ill-feel-ing between Prussian and Bavarian troops is much more acute, and there appears to be good foundation for this belief. Some of these Bavarian troops who had arrived only a few days before from another part of the front after a long period of rest, and who were immediately thrown into tho front line, declared that they were being sacrificed. A battalion commander was told that ho would be shot if he came into the front line. During the march from their billets the men kept straggling, and the officers who rounded them up and ordered tho column to keep formation were jeered at without any attempt being made to punish the offenders. As regards the condition of the prisoners, the averago physique is good. Many weedy, unfit-looking youths were in the little procession of captives. Some regiments had recently been 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 tho depot. A new 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 the Guards, were quite smart, trim, and gloved. Their uniforms were clean and well kept-—some had been in billets until the day beforo the battle, and had not time to become stained and muddy before falling into our hands.