oms!

After trudging, mostly uphill, in a downpour of rain, we reached a place
called Guise at 2 A.M. Here we managed to get some food. I was glad enough
to throw my waterproof sheet over me and fall asleep. On being awakened, I
felt as though I had slept for weeks, but found it had only been for one
hour and twenty minutes. We then received some "gunfire" and our _first_
issue of rum. We resumed the march. On arriving at La Grange, the
Camerons, or what was left of them, joined us, taking the place of the
annihilated Fusiliers in our brigade.

We were so tired that night that I could have slept on a bed of nails,
points up, but we had not been in our billets very long when we were
ordered out, as the outpost had reported the approach of Uhlans in
considerable numbers.

We were half asleep as we ran down into the street to our allotted posts.
One of the first persons we encountered in the town was a Frenchman,
raving mad. We asked him what was the matter, but he could not reply. He
jibbered like an ape; his twitching lips slavered and foamed. Some of his
neighbours took him in hand and led him away. One of them told us his
story:

"The Prussians came in here yesterday. There was no one to resist them.
They posted sentries. Then those who were not on duty broke into cellars.
Casks of wine were rolled up into the streets, and, where squads gathered
together, there were piles of bottles. The soldiers did not stop to pull
the corks. They knocked off the necks of the bottles and filled their
aluminum cups with red wine and white, mixing one type with another, and
swilling it in as fast as they could drink. Dozens of them fell in the
gutters, drunk. Others reeled through the village, abusing and insulting
men and women alike. If a man resisted, he was shot. This poor fellow,
whom you have seen, was in his door yard with his wife. A Prussian seized
her about the waist. She struggled. He crushed her to him with his brutish
arm. His companions, all drunk, laughed and jeered. The woman's clothes
were ripped from her shoulders in her struggle. Meanwhile others bound the
husband to one of his own fruit trees, so that he could not escape the
horror of it. One--more drunken, more bestial than the others--slashed off
the woman's breasts and threw them to a dog. The woman died."

This of itself was enough to have made us rage against the enemy whom
hitherto we had regarded as an honourable foe, but it was not all. I, with
other me