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 guard