After a time the single post failed to satisfy the implacable Commandant.  Trees were requisitioned for the punishment, and I have seen as many as three men undergoing the sentence simultaneously.  Their combined shrieks and agonised cries penetrated to every corner of the camp.  One could not escape them.  On one occasion when Major Bach was standing as usual before one of his victims, laughing and jeering at his futile writhings and agonised appeals for mercy, a number of British prisoners who were standing around in mute sympathy for the hapless comrade could not control their feelings.  Suddenly they gave expression to fierce hissing of disapproval.  Major Bach turned, but not with the mocking triumph that one would have expected.  His face wore the look of the characteristic bully who is suddenly confronted with one who is more than his match.  He was taken completely off his guard, so unexpected and vigorous was our outburst.  But when he saw that he was merely threatened by a few unarmed and helpless Britishers his sang froid returned, although it was with a palpable effort.  He glared at us.  There was no disguising or possibility of misconstruing the expressions of loathsome disgust and rage upon our faces.  One and all wondered afterwards why he did not sentence every man of us to a spell at the post.  Possibly anticipating that things might become ugly unless he manifested some semblance of authority, he assumed an anger which we could easily see was far from being real, and ordered us to barracks.  We moved away slowly and sullenly, but the guard coming up we were unceremoniously hurried into our domiciles, although it demanded energetic rifle proddings and clubbings from the soldiers who swarmed around us in overwhelming numbers, to enforce the order.

This punishment was by no means confined to the civilian prisoners.  It was meted out whenever the opportunity arose to the British soldiers with equal impartiality.  But for some reason which we could never fathom, unless it was to cause further pain, torture and humiliation, mentally as well as physically, the revolting task of tying up an unfortunate Tommy was entrusted to one of his own sergeants.  He had to perform the repugnant work against his will, but the sergeants eased the poor fellow’s plight as much as they dared by tying them up as leniently as possible, while they maintained an ever-watchful, although unostentatious vigilance, over them while suffering the penalty.

By the introduction of this fiendish punishment Major Bach completely subdued the camp into a colony of crushed men.  We all went in dire dread of him, the fear of being the victim of such brutality cowing us far more effectively than any other punishment we had encountered.  Those who had undergone the torture recited such harrowing stories of their sufferings that we were extremely anxious not to incur the wrath of the devilish Commandant in any way whatever.