I filled my tub
with pails of water from the tap and started my bath. Oh, how refreshing
it was! I don't think I ever appreciated the luxury of a bath until that
moment. When through with my ablution it was necessary, before I could
dress, to grease my body with a vermin-killer that is supplied the men.
This done, I commenced dressing, and had donned my underwear and pants
when,--Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p!--and a shell landed right in the middle
of the bathroom, and the bunch of merry-hearted fellows was transformed
into a panic-stricken crowd, leaping and jumping out of the tubs in
every direction in a pell-mell rush, helter-skelter, of men, some half
dressed, others absolutely naked, intermingled with the women
attendants, in the scramble for safety. Civilians, coming from their
houses in a mad rush, added to the confusion.
When the smoke of the explosion cleared, thirty of the bathers lay dead
in, on and around the tubs, and forty were wounded, all more or less
badly. Inside of three minutes, more shells were planted, some of them
landing plumb in the square, and, to my intense sorrow, I learned later
that Fox, my little chum, there had paid the supreme price.
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