On the second floor there was the difference that two large dining rooms were interspaced between the living rooms. Dining room, it should be added, was a term purely of courtesy. It is true that in these rooms the large majority of officers in the Kaserne stored their cooking utensils, prepared their food for cooking, and gulped it down as quickly as might be when cooked. But this feature of the rooms was not stressed, and they were used in turn, and during the greater part of the day, as theatres, lecture rooms, concert rooms, reading rooms, and churches; on Saturday nights, or whenever a “show” was on, officers were requested to have finished their dinner by six. Dinner over, the cups and plates were dumped in a convenient corner, the tables were pushed up together to one end of the room to form a solid platform, and in an incredibly short space of time the drop scene and the wings were hoisted triumphantly. Then, after two hours’ rapt forgetfulness of the surroundings, down came the final curtain, out trooped the audience, and back the tables were pushed into their respective sites. The drill was clockwork. There was nothing that we would less willingly have foregone than our “shows,” and the scene-shifters would have done so least of all. But we must leave the dining rooms and mount the stone staircase once again to the attic floor. This consisted of a few small rooms at the near (Kommandantur) end, and the orderlies’ quarters, with a stout wooden partition, strengthened with sheet iron, in between. The small rooms were remarkable only for their extreme cold and the fact that one of them played a highly important part in the subsequent proceedings. The orderlies occupied the farther end of the attic floor. We had the opportunity of inspecting their quarters when we went up at certain fixed times to the baggage room, which was at that end of the passage, to remove, under the surveillance of a German Feldwebel, such articles as we might require from our heavy luggage. To do so we of course used the further (orderlies’) staircase. This was supposed to be the only occasion on which the officers might enter the building by the further doorway. To check irregularities in this respect a sentry was always placed at a spot outside the outer wire and exactly opposite the doorway.