that a shovel be
issued to his office.

A laconic message came back by my servant:

No. 105671A. The Camp Commandant presents his compliments to
--------- Mr. M., and begs to inform him that he is not an
2 ironmonger. The correct procedure is for Mr. M.
to direct his servant to purchase a shovel and to send in the
account to the C.C., by whom it will be discharged.

The Commandant, quite needlessly, apologised to me afterwards for his
reply, explaining mournfully that the whole staff appeared to be under
the impression that he was a kind of Harrods' Stores. He could supply
desks and tables--the sappers are amazingly efficient at turning them
out at the shortest notice--and he could produce stationery, but he drew
the line at ironmongery. But his principal task is to let lodgings.

The Q.M.G. and his satellites, who are the universal providers of the
Army, have already been described. Their waggons are known as
"transports of delight," and they can supply you with anything from a
field-dressing to a toothbrush, and from an overcoat to a cake of soap.
And as the Q.M.G. is concerned with goods, the A.G. is preoccupied with
men. He makes up drafts as a railway transport officer makes up trains,
and can tell you the location of every unit from a brigade to a
battalion. Also, he and his deputy assistants make up casualty lists. It
is expeditiously done; each night's casualty list contains the names of
all casualties among officers up till noon of the day on which it is
made out. (The lists of the men, which are, of course, a much bigger
affair, are made up at the Base.) The task is no light one--the
transposition of an initial or the attribution of a casualty to a wrong
battalion may mean gratuitous sorrow and anxiety in some distant home in
England. And there is the mournful problem of the "missing," the
agonised letters from those who do not know whether those they love are
alive or dead.

It is only right to say that everything that can possibly be done is
done to trace such cases. More than that, the graves of fallen officers
and men are carefully located and registered by a Graves Registry
Department, with an officer of field rank in charge of it. Those graves
lie everywhere; I have seen them in the flower-bed of a chateau used as
the H.Q. of an A.D.M.S.; they are to be found by the roadside, in the
curtilage of farms, and on the outskirts of villages.