Description
A column of fours, as far as the eye can reach, nothing but Germans, muddy, sullen, and harmless, for they are prisoners, the result of a day's fighting. Some of them still wear their heavy steel trench helmets, others have the round gray caps with a red band, the headgear of the German private ; while others are wearing visored hats ; tho men ate non-comissioned officers. On many of the hats you can see the small fluted button, a part of the German army insignia, made of concentric circles, red, white and black. Many of them are wearing spectacles and practically all of them have a sack under the arm, filled with the few necessities that they considered worth keeping when they threw up their hands and cried "Kamerad." A good idea of the German uniforms can be obtained by looking at those men who are wearing overcoats and then at those who are wearing the ordinary tunics. The feet of one of the men are visible, showing the clumsy field boots with which the soldiers of the Kaiser were equipped. Two of the men, those with the Red Cross arm bands, were a part of a medical detachment. Far to the rear of the group you can see the stockade of wire and stakes erected to make the German think twice before attempting to pass the armed guards, who patrol the edge of the camp day and night. American troops during the war lost only 4,480 men taken prisoners by the enemy. On the other hand, they captured 63,000 German prisoners, 16,000 of them in the battle of St. Mihiel and 23,000 in the battle of the Meuse-Argonne.
