d and
from quite close, so that it blew the groin completely out, making a
terrible hole. We could not tie up so bad a wound and he bled to
death. Hookie Walker remained with him to the last, five hours later,
when he said: "I'm going to sleep boys," and did so. Fortunately, he
did not suffer. And all the others except young Cox were equally
fortunate, since they were murdered outright.

Taylor's was the most calculated of all the murders we had witnessed
and outdid even those of the wounded because the excitement of the
fight was two hours old and he was doing the bidding of his captors at
the time. The killing of those who resisted was of course quite in
order. Why he was killed while Walker was left unharmed and at his
side to the last we did not know and could only credit to a whimsy of
our captors. No punishment was visited upon his murderer or upon any
of them so far as we were able to learn.

Upon my later return to Canada I found that Taylor's sister there had
received a letter from a German officer enclosing a letter addressed
to her which had been found on her brother's body, together with three
war medals and a Masonic ring. The latter was the key to the incident
since the officer also claimed to have been a Mason. In his letter
this officer said that her brother had met a soldier's death!

Some said that our friendly officer was not a German but an Irishman.
I doubted that but it may have been so, for it was true that his
speech contained no trace of the accent which is usually associated
with a German's English speech. His was that of an English gentleman.
And to him we undoubtedly owed our wretched lives that day.

I in particular have good cause to be grateful. A German, all of six
foot four, who swung a tremendously broad headsman's axe with a curved
blade, tried several times to get at me. Each time the officer stopped
him. Still he persisted. He apparently saw no one else and kept his
eye fastened on me with deadly intention in it. He pushed aside the
others, Prussians and prisoners alike; he whirled the shining blade
high above a face lit up with savage exultation, terrible to see, and
which reflected the sensual revelling of his heated brain in the
bloody orgy ahead. As I followed the incredibly rapid motions of the
blade, my blood turned to water. My limbs refused to act and my mind
travelled back over the years to a little Scottish village where I had
been used to sit in the dark corners of the