One day three of us experienced a narrow escape, which serves to illustrate how keen were our captors to submit us to this crucial test.  We three had been ordered to the field.  We packed our few belongings, including our tin pails and other indispensable utensils upon our backs.  We were marching abreast and a few paces behind a young German officer, chatting merrily among ourselves, when we met a French soldier approaching.  He was unusually gay and as he passed he yelled out the popular enquiry which he had evidently acquired while fraternising with our Tommies in the camp.

“Air ve do’n harted?” he hailed, and he laughed gaily at the loads with which we were struggling.  To this we returned an emphatic negative to which one of the party, S——­, a schoolmaster who was fluent in French and German, added a joke.  Evidently the Frenchman saw the point of the jest because he burst out in a fit of unrestrained merriment which was so infectious as to compel us to participate.

The officer who was ahead of us, whipped round and vehemently declared that we were laughing at him.  S——­ protested and explained that such would be the very last thing we should ever think of doing.  The officer went on ahead quite unconvinced and in high dudgeon.  That we should select one of the myrmidons of the All-Highest as a target for our banter was the offence of offences in his estimable conceit.  When we reached the entrance to the field we had to pass a small office in which we were registered and we discovered the immature upstart loudly and excitedly dwelling upon the enormous indignity to which he had been submitted by us.

The officer in charge stopped us and repeated the accusation which had been made.  S——­ gave a full explanation of the whole incident, but the upstart who considered that his pride had been vilely outraged would not listen to it.  Then and there he ordered that we should be tied up to the trees for four hours to give us something to laugh about.  I can assure you that we trembled in our shoes:  our fate hung in the balance.  The officer-in-charge of the field, however, was more level-headed and broader-minded, although he could not calm his excited colleague.  At last he point blank refused to mete out the desired punishment.  He turned to us.

“I accept your explanation.  I don’t think you would be guilty of such an offence to German honour and dignity!”

We were more profuse than ever in our humble apologies to the young cock-of-the-walk for any offence we might have committed unwittingly but we assured him that our mirth had been entirely provoked by the gay French soldier’s joke.

“I believe you,” was the officer’s reply, “but be very careful.  Don’t do it again.  As you see it is likely to be misunderstood!”

With that he dismissed us.  We scurried off like startled rabbits, thankful for our narrow escape, but our last glimpse of the affair was the two officers who had resumed wrangling.  It was an extremely fortunate circumstance for us that the officer-in-charge of the field was one of the few reasonable Germans attached to the camp.