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occupied. We did nothing all Sunday but wash and clean and fold together in the regulation manner, hang things up in the regulation way and put others in the place laid down by the regulations. Our leather had to have a gloss on it as though it were varnished; there must not be a speck on our uniform or equipment, either inside or out. I can assert with utter truthfulness that when the men of a German penal battalion go on parade on Monday they are immaculate from top to toe.
    But I also think that there must be something wrong with military order and cleanliness if, after toiling a whole Sunday to achieve it, you do not feel any of that satisfaction, that ease of mind that one should normally feel after such a clean up.
    That parade was no festival of purification. It was a nightmare of fear. The immaculately clean, tidy soldier did not feel clean; he merely felt like a hunted animal.
    I find that I keep using these expressions "hunted animals," "panic fear" and "wild with terror." I know that repetition is bad, that good literary style calls for variety in expression, but I am afraid that I shall have to go on sinning, for how can you find a variety of expression for what is uniform? Some perhaps could, but I am not sure that I can. I am too tired, too bemused, too desperate, sometimes also too angry to be able to devote time and energy to the search for shades of meaning and fine distinctions. What I have to tell is so tragic; and even now, all these years afterward, I am sometimes so oppressed by it that I feel that I have the right to ask for your help in making good where I have failed from your own vocabulary. As long as you understand what I mean, I do not mind if now and again you shake your head and say: "He could have said that better."
    We, the immaculate, felt like hunted animals. We knew that whatever happened we were going to get it in the neck. The most paradoxical thing about the whole performance was that if the Hauptfeldwebel could not find anything over which to catch us out, he was furious, and one or other of us immaculate soldiers would catch it worse than ever. Woe betide him who catches it in the neck over nothing--he catches it ten-fold. It is not easy to do right in such a situation.
    "Front rank one step forward--rear rank one step backward-- MARCH!"
    One--TWO.
    For two long minutes after the ranks have opened, the Hauptfeldwebel stands watching. He who sways even slightly catches it for refusing obedience. But we have learned to turn ourselves into pieces of wood and, as such, can stand without moving for half an hour at a time. It is a sort of trance or catalepsy to be able to achieve which is worth untold gold to the soldier who knows the value of being able to stand and just be a piece of wood.
    The Hauptfeldwebel roars: "Is all ready for inspection?" The company replies in chorus: "Yes, Herr Hauptfeldwebel."
    "No one forgotten to clean something?"
    Chorus:"No, Herr Hauptfeldwebel."
    He glares at us ferociously. Now he has us.
    "You don't say so," he says ironically. "It's the first time in the history of this battalion, if it's true. But that we shall have to see."
    Slowly he approaches the first piece of wood, walks round it once or twice; circling your opponent without saying a word is a very effective form of the warfare of nerves. The back of your neck grows hot and your hands become clammy and the thoughts in your head start whirling round hysterically in all directions but their natural ones. You stand stock still and work yourself into a state of nervous breathlessness, and you suddenly feel that you stink both figuratively and in actual fact.
    "Yes, yes--that we shall have to see," he repeats behind the third man in the front rank.
    There is dead silence while he inspects number four and number five. Then comes a bellow: "No. 3 Company--shun!" which is followed by the usual flow of verbal filth. We said of the Hauptfeldwebel that he could not talk filth without saying filth first;