It was a picture of misery and wretchedness such as it would be impossible to parallel. I recalled the unhappy scenes I had witnessed around the railway terminus at Berlin under similar conditions, but that was paradise to the field at Sennelager Camp on the fateful night of September 11. It appeared as if the Almighty Himself had turned upon us at last, and was resolved to blot us from the face of the earth. We were transformed into a condition bordering on frigidity from rain-soaked clothes clinging to bodies reduced to a state of low vitality and empty stomachs. Had we been in good health I doubt whether the storm and exposure would have wreaked such havoc among us.
While my friend and I were standing on a knoll pondering upon the utter helplessness and misery around us, singing and whistling were borne to us upon the wind. We listened to catch fragments of a comic song between the gusts. There was no mistaking those voices. We picked our way slowly to beneath the trees whence the voices proceeded, glad to meet some company which could be merry and bright, even if the mood had to be assumed with a desperate effort.
Beneath the trees we found a small party of our indomitable compatriots. They received us with cheery banter and joke and an emphatic assurance that "it is all right in the summer time." They were quite as wretched and as near exhaustion as anybody upon the field, but they were firmly determined not to show it. A comic song had been started as a distraction, the refrain being bawled for all it was worth as if in defiance of the storm. This was what had struck our ears.
This panacea being pronounced effective a comprehensive programme was rendered. Every popular song that occurred to the mind was turned on and yelled with wild lustiness. Those who did not know the words either whistled the air or improvised an impossible ditty. Whenever there was a pause to recall some new song, the interval was occupied with "Rule, Britannia!" This was a prime favourite, and repetition did not stale its forceful rendition, especial stress being laid upon the words, "Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!" to which was roared the eternal enquiry, "Are we down-hearted?" The welkin-smashing negative, crashing through the night, and not entirely free from embroidery, offered a conclusive answer.
It takes a great deal to destroy a Britisher's spirits, but this terrible night almost supplied the crucial test. We were not only combating Prussian atrocity but Nature's ferocity as well, and the two forces now appeared to be in alliance. The men sang, as they confessed, because it constituted a kind of employment at least to the mind, enabled them to forget their misery somewhat, and proved an excellent antidote to the gnawing pain in the vicinity of the waist-belt. Once a singer started up the strains of "Little Mary," but this was unanimously vetoed as coming too near home. Then from absence of a better inspiration, we commenced to roar "Home, Sweet Home," which I think struck just as responsive a chord, but the sentiment of which made a universal appeal.
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.
The sanitary arrangements upon this field were of the most barbarous character, comprising merely deep wide open ditches which had been excavated by ourselves. Those of us who had not been broken by the experience, although suffering from extreme weakness, pulled ourselves together to make an effort to save what human flotsam and jetsam we could. But we could not repress a fearful curse and a fierce outburst of swearing when we came to the latrine. Six poor fellows, absolutely worn out, had crawled to a narrow ledge under the brink of the bank to seek a little shelter from the pitiless storm. There they had lain, growing weaker and weaker, until unable to cling any longer to their precarious perch they had slipped into the trench to lie among the human excreta, urine and other filth. They knew where they were but were so far gone as to be unable to lift a finger on their own behalf. Their condition, when we fished them out, to place them upon as dry a spot as we could find, I can leave to the imagination. I may say this was the only occasion upon which I remember the British prisoners giving vent to such voluble swearing as they then used, and I consider it was justified.
In an adjacent field our heroes from Mons were camped and a small party of us made our way to the first tent. We were greeted by the R.A.M.C. Water had been playing around their beds, but they acknowledged that they had fared better because they were protected overhead. The soldiers, however, made light of their situation, although we learned that many of the Tommies, from lack of accommodation, had been compelled to spend the night in the open. Still, as they were somewhat more inured to exposure than ourselves, they had accepted the inevitable more stoically, although the ravages of the night and the absence of food among them were clearly revealed by their haggard and pinched faces.