the wiliest of Tommies
can such material be wangled.) The Q.M.S. of the Ten Hundred was not
exactly popular among the ranks. N.B.--Neither Q.M.S.'s nor C.Q.M.S.'s
are acquainted as a rule with the gentle solitude of the first line
trenches. Their duty it is to receive and issue the "plum and apple,"
the "road-paving" biscuit and the weekly change of under-garments.

In the Field no man has actual possession of shirt, sock, or
under-garments. These are all given in at each visitation to the baths
and others issued in return. Your shirt thrown over to you by the
C.Q.M.S. might be somewhat decrepit and holey or might have some
resemblance to a new one. You might have two odd socks or (if you were
among the bevy of schemers) two or three pairs would be in your
possession--illegally.

Parades were detestable. They had imagined that England was the training
camp for these operations. In France they had expectation of fighting
and resting, NOT marching up and down with occasional halts, while the
Platoon Officer furtively asks his sergeant what order he must give
next.

The pivot round which all parades manoeuvre is always with the
Regimental Sergeant-Major (the main function of all R.S.M.'s is to walk
round with a big stick). He, an old Regular, despite the iron discipline
so candidly hated, was withall a staunch supporter of fair play for the
ranker, a tartar on parade, and feared more by the junior N.C.O.'s than
the very inhabitor of lower regions.

An N.C.O. (Non-Commissioned Officer) is an individual whose main talent
lies in the ability to bawl out orders at men one yard distant in a
voice having a hundred yards range. The possessors of some subtle
superiority not descernible by ordinary individuals, they are for this
reason forbidden to converse or walk with the men when "off parade."

These stringent regulations never materialise in actual practice, but it
conveys a hint of the tinge of "Hindenburgism" with which the Army is
tainted--excepting Dominion forces, wherein the negligible gulf between
officers and men is easily bridged.

There will always, however, be a sneaking regard in the hearts of the
few Normans who rested there; for Houvin. It was there that men could
sleep far from the haunting spectre of anticipated death or devastation:
there, too, life could be enjoyed to the full in the happy knowledge
that no shells would pitch near by, no machine-gun turn its whining
trail of bullets across your path. A