In another place⁠—a prison in St. -Omer⁠—I had a conversation with two other officers of the German army who were more courteous than the gunners. They had been taken at Hooge and were both Prussians⁠—one a stout captain, smiling behind horn spectacles, with a false, jovial manner, hiding the effect of the ordeal from which he had just escaped, and his hatred of us; the other a young, slim fellow, with clear-cut features, who was very nervous, but bowed repeatedly, with his heels together, as though in a café at Ehrenbreitstein, when high officers came in. A few hours before he had been buried alive. One of our mines had exploded under him, flinging a heap of earth over him. The fat man by his side⁠—his captain⁠—had been buried, too, in the dugout. They had scraped themselves out by clawing at the earth.