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Russia fought Germany for three years (1914-17) before a revolutionary (Bolshevik, later Soviet) government negotiated a peace. In the ensuing Civil War (1917-22), German prisoners in Russia were not returned home. They remained in their camps in Siberia, where Greenfield doctor Charles Canedy saw them. It is probably the summer of 1919, as two of them are wearing shorts. These prisoners are probably walking to a meal, or perhaps they are going to work. They walk roughly three abreast, implying that they have just been counted. The motley assortment of clothing they wear hints at their long captivity.