The Ypres Times.
125
The air „raids continued, of course, to provide much excitement. August 21st
Last night was the fifth night in succession that we have been bombed by aeroplanes. It
was really very amusing. We had just got some fruit and were having dessert when,
suddenly, the S.M. sounded three blasts on his whistle and out went the lamp. Then,
droning and humming like a lot of angry bees, came the Bosche, and the row commenced
in earnest, bombs dropping all over the shop. The flashes as the bombs struck the ground,
the bright bursts of the shrapnel in the sky round the Bosche planes, and the searchlights
showing 'the enemy up in the little oval rings of light, made a most interesting sight,
accompanied as it was by the shriek of the shrapnel and the ping of the bullets from our
machine guns and those of the Bosche."
My multifarious duties involved contact with all sorts and conditions of men. Sep
tember, 12th The day before yesterday a lot of West Indian Blacks arrived and one
had to find tents for them. Last night a battalion of five hundred Chinese coolies were
marching up, and one also had to find them a camping ground."
I saw quite a
lot of the prisoners
of war. They were
always extremely
dirty. The Bavar
ians were quite as
evil looking as the
Prussians. The
prisoners of war
camp was a num
ber of wire cages.
The barbed wire
ten feet high and
each compound
had a raised box
at the end of it,
approached by a
ladder, with a sen
try keeping guard.
Most of the in
mates on the occa
sion of one visit I
made were mere
boys, and all of a
verv low tvpe.
GERMAN PRISONERS OF WAR. Thev had the jook
[Imperial War Museum photograph. Crown Copyright. jqw cjagg
Borstal youths, and a lot. of them had criminalI might almost say animal lookingfaces.
These men were captured during the great Australian advance, an account of which
I wrote on September 23rd
The Bosche were taken by surprise and two colonels were captured, one at break
fast. We made all strong unwounded prisoners stretcher bearers to carry away our
wounded, but one colonel was very much on his dignity and spoke English perfectly.
A Cornstalk Tommy ordered him to pick up a stretcher, and carry a wounded man. He
refused, saying, Don't you know I am a Prussian colonel?' The Tommy replied, I
don't care what you are. If you don't pick up the strefcher and be quick about it I will
run this through you (meaning his bayonet), and the colonel was made to work with
the rest, the point of the bayonet being within an inch of him."
c