But hymns were resolutely barred.  Those boisterous and irrepressible Tapleys absolutely declined to profane their faith on such a night as this.  It was either a comic song or nothing.  To have sung hymns with the swinish brutal guards lounging around would have conveyed an erroneous impression.  They would have chuckled at the thought that at last we had been thoroughly broken in and in our resignation had turned Latter Day Saints or Revivalists.  These boys were neither Saints, Revivalists nor Sinners, but merely victims of Prussian brutality in its blackest form and grimly determined not to give in under any circumstances whatever.

When at last a suggestion was made that a move would be advantageous, one shouted “Come on, boys!” Linking arms so as to form a solid human wall, but in truth to hold one another up, we marched across the field, singing “Soldiers of the King,” or some other appropriate martial song to keep our spirits at a high level, while we stamped some warmth into our jaded bodies, exercised our stiffening muscles, and demonstrated to our captors that we were by no means “knocked to the wide” as they fondly imagined.  Now and again a frantic cheer would ring through the night, or a yell of wild glee burst out as one of the party went floundering through a huge pool to land prostrate in the mud.  When it is remembered that some of us had not tasted a bite of food for forty-eight hours, and had drunk nothing but thin and watery acorn coffee, it is possible to gain some measure of the indomitable spirit which was shown upon this desperate occasion.  The attitude and persiflage under such depressing conditions did not fail to impress our guards.  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.