oaked with water, and thickly covered with mud. He made his way to the
field kitchen where there happened to be a small fire under the cauldron
in which the rations were prepared. He slipped the soddened bread
beneath the grate to dry it. While he was so doing, the cook, an
insignificant little bully, came along. Learning what the soldier was
doing, he stooped down, raked out the fire, and buried the bread among
the ashes. Then laughing at his achievement he went on his way.

The soldier, without a murmur, recovered his treasure with difficulty.
He moved out into the open, succeeded in finding a few dry sticks, lit a
small fire, and placed his bread on top of it. Again he was caught. His
warder bustled up, saw the little fire, which he scattered with his
feet, and then crunched the small hunk of bread to pieces in the mud and
water with his iron heel.

The look that came over the soldier's face at this unprovoked
demonstration of heartless cruelty was fearful, but he kept his head.
"Lor' blime!" he commented to me when I came up and sympathised with him
over his loss, "I could have knocked the god-damned head off the swine
and I wonder I didn't."

I may say that during the night the guard announced an order which had
been issued for the occasion--no one was to light a fire upon the Field.
Even the striking of a match was sternly forbidden. The penalty was to
be a bullet, the guards having been instructed to shoot upon the
detection of an infraction of the order. One man was declared to have
been killed for defying the order intentionally or from ignorance, but
of this I cannot say anything definitely. Rumour was just as rife and
startling among us on the field as among the millions of a humming city.
But we understood that two or three men went raving mad, several were
picked up unconscious, one Belgian committed suicide by hanging himself
with his belt, while another Belgian was found dead, to which I refer
elsewhere.

At 5.30 we were lined up. We were going to get something to eat we were
told. But when the hungry, half-drowned souls reached the field kitchen
after waiting and shivering in their wet clothes for two and a half
hours, it was to receive nothing more than a small basin of the eternal
lukewarm acorn coffee. We were not even given the usual piece of black
bread.

The breakfast, though nauseating, was swallowed greedily. But it did not
satisfy "little Mary" by any means. During my sojourn among German