s. They looked on
with mouths open and scratched their heads in perplexity. Afterwards
they admitted that nothing had impressed them so powerfully as the
behaviour of the British prisoners that night and conceded that we were
truly "wonderful," to which one of the boys retorted that it was not
wonderful at all but "merely natural and could not be helped."
Personally I think singing was the most effective medium for passing the
time which we could have hit on. It drowned the volleys of oaths,
curses, wails, groans, sobbings, and piteous appeals which rose to
Heaven from all around us. If we had kept dumb our minds must have been
depressingly affected if not unhinged by what we could see and hear.

Thus we spent the remaining hours of that terrible night until with the
break of day the rain ceased. Then we took a walk round to inspect the
wreckage of humanity brought about by Major Bach's atrocious action in
turning us out upon an open field, void of shelter, and without food,
upon a night when even the most brutal man would willingly have braved a
storm to succour a stranded or lost dog. As the daylight increased our
gorge rose. The ground was littered with still and exhausted forms, too
weak to do aught but groan, and absolutely unable to extricate
themselves from the pools, mud, and slush in which they were lying. Some
were rocking themselves laboriously to and fro singing and whining, but
thankful that day had broken. One man had gone clean mad and was
stamping up and down, his long hair waving wildly, hatless and coatless,
bringing down the most blood-freezing demoniacal curses upon the
authorities and upbraiding the Almighty for having cast us adrift that
night.

The sanitary arrangements upon this field were of the most barbarous
character, comprising merely deep wide open ditches which had been
excavated by ourselves. Those of us who had not been broken by the
experience, although suffering from extreme weakness, pulled ourselves
together to make an effort to save what human flotsam and jetsam we
could. But we could not repress a fearful curse and a fierce outburst of
swearing when we came to the latrine. Six poor fellows, absolutely worn
out, had crawled to a narrow ledge under the brink of the bank to seek a
little shelter from the pitiless storm. There they had lain, growing
weaker and weaker, until unable to cling any longer to their precarious
perch they had slipped into the trench to lie among the human exc