An Army of British soldiers is marching through Germany, with bands playing, and the men singing. This is the victorious army of occupation. They are met by another British army, an army of starving men, who die by hundreds by the roadside. This is their story told by one who has seen them: “In droves of several hundreds at a time they started out to walk from Forbach or from Kleinbittersfeld, on the Rhine, distances of fifty or sixty miles, to the French lines. No food was given them, not even a mouthful of bread. All of them were in shameful rags.
“I talked yesterday to thirty of them, all British soldiers captured in March or April, and all told me that they had never had any clothing from the Germans. They started on their long march in boots with the soles dropping off, or else in wooden clogs.
“None had socks their feet were bound up with cotton rags. Some had overcoats, some had none. Many of them had sold their overcoats and stout British ammunition boots, even their solitary shirts, to their guards for potatoes and extra bread.
“They had no food, and were tramping through country in which they could not inquire their way because they could not speak either French or German, and in which people have literally nothing to give to anyone after their own bare needs have been satisfied.
“They are in such a state that French officers, who are well used to the sights of war, were horrified to see men in such a case. Some of them certainly died by the roadside of cold and exhaustion only a few miles from their friends.
“How many died there is no means of knowing. Some men I talked with told me positively that in their party five had died. Others told me of two deaths or three among their parties. The big droves, by natural process, split up into groups, which clung together for company as long as possible.
“One lad told me of a comrade in his regiment captured with him in April, with whom he had shared the hunger and brutalities of prison camp life for over seven months, who dropped like Heine’s grenadier on reaching the abandoned German front trenches, and died within a few miles of help.
“Neither of them knew where he was, and at two o’clock on Sunday morning, when the ice was forming on the puddles in the shell-holes, and there was not a light in sight, or a friend―or even an enemy—to help, there was nothing to do but to wait until the exhausted man was dead, and then go on alone.”
Why They Suffered
“It would be difficult to overstate the misery of these poor countrymen of ours, whose fault was that they were British soldiers. I have as yet met only one Rumanian and heard of few Italians who have been treated in this way, but there is no doubt that it has happened to thousands of British soldiers.
“The men who are being made to suffer are the British, and it is done intentionally.
“All the prisoners I have spoken to since the Armistice was concluded, of whatever nationality, agree upon one thing―that is, that while all are starved, the British are hungrier and far worse treated than the others.”― “Express.”