We are going to pull out of here before those crazy French yonder destroy all our rolling stock." Fifteen minutes later, though the French shell-fire had ceased coming this way, the train crawled out of the yard.

It ran along slowly, though sometime in the night it increased its speed.
Dick Prescott will never forget the misery of that night.

When the train was under way the cold was intense in these half-open cattle cars.

No appeal for water to drink was heeded.
Despite their discomforts, most of the prisoners managed to sleep some, though standing up.
In the middle of the night Prescott awoke, stiff, nauseated, hungry and parched with tormenting thirst.

Though he did not know it at that moment, the train had halted because of a breakdown in a train ahead.
Along the track came that tormenting corporal.