After the train started on again the big sentry, who looked rather like a Scotch Highlander, and came no doubt from the mountain forests of Bavaria, produced a couple of night-lights, with whose slender flickering the carriage was dimly lit up.
Our new sentries had no idea of discipline or duty whatever. They seemed to look upon themselves as showmen travelling with a collection of curious beasts, for at every station where we stopped people took it in turns to come right into the carriage, and we met with considerable annoyance and impertinence from many of them. One German, who said he was shortly going to the front to kill some Engländer, tried to drag my greatcoat from me, but this was too much for the sentry, who ordered him to desist.
Owing to the constant entry of these unwelcome visitors it now became impossible to think of sleep, for whenever I tried or pretended to doze I was pulled up and asked to answer some impertinent questions.
The type of German soldier that now began to predominate was of a far different class to what we had met with before. It is probable that the men we had conversed with between Cambrai and Coblenz had been to a certain extent tamed by experience at the front, whereas the older and more ignorant class of Landsturm, who at every station forced their attentions upon us, spoke to us and about us as if we were dangerous criminals, and on several occasions if it had not been for the sentries we would have been roughly handled.
It was at Aschaffenburg, on the Bavarian frontier, that we had occasion to be really alarmed at the hostile attitude of the crowd on the station platform.
We reached Aschaffenburg at three in the morning, and were informed that we were to stop there for five hours. There was nothing for it but to try and get some sleep; this, however, was not to be allowed. A curious-looking mob of men dressed in bits of all uniforms collected outside our carriage and proceeded to go through a pantomimic exhibition of hate. The leader of this mob was a nasty-looking ruffian, more than half drunk, who kept calling on us to come outside and fight; also threatening to come inside and cut our throats, and brandishing a big pocket-knife, he looked quite up to doing it. However, the mob, which was getting more and more excited, was eventually dispersed by an officer, who rebuked them for insulting men who were defenceless and disabled.