reta,
urine and other filth. They knew where they were but were so far gone as
to be unable to lift a finger on their own behalf. Their condition, when
we fished them out, to place them upon as dry a spot as we could find, I
can leave to the imagination. I may say this was the only occasion upon
which I remember the British prisoners giving vent to such voluble
swearing as they then used, and I consider it was justified.

In an adjacent field our heroes from Mons were camped and a small party
of us made our way to the first tent. We were greeted by the R.A.M.C.
Water had been playing around their beds, but they acknowledged that
they had fared better because they were protected overhead. The
soldiers, however, made light of their situation, although we learned
that many of the Tommies, from lack of accommodation, had been compelled
to spend the night in the open. Still, as they were somewhat more inured
to exposure than ourselves, they had accepted the inevitable more
stoically, although the ravages of the night and the absence of food
among them were clearly revealed by their haggard and pinched faces.

The men in the tents confessed that they had been moved by the sounds
which penetrated to their ears from the field in which the civilian
prisoners had been turned adrift. They immediately enquired after the
condition of our boys. Unfortunately we could not yield much information
upon this point, as we were still partially in ignorance of the plight
of our compatriots. But there was no mistaking the depth of the feeling
of pity which went out for "the poor devils of civvies," while the
curses and oaths which were rained down upon the head of Major Bach with
true British military emphasis and meaning revealed the innermost
feelings of our soldiers very convincingly.

Seeing that we were exhausted and shivering from emptiness the R.A.M.C.
made a diligent search for food, but the quest was in vain. Their larder
like ours was empty. In fact the Tommies themselves were as hard-pushed
for food as we were.

I witnessed one incident with an English Tommy which provoked tremendous
feeling when related to his comrades. He was walking the field soaked to
the skin, perishing from cold produced by lack of food, continuously
hitching in his belt to keep his "mess-tin" quiet, and on the brink of
collapse. He happened to kick something soft. He picked the object up
and to his extreme delight found it to be a piece of black bread,
s