varying in detail but never in hardship or risk. They groused
and growled, maintained that their physical condition was becoming worn
down by the excess of work, insisted angrily that a rest should be a
REST and not a camouflaged existence of heavy fatigues, pointed out that
if Jerry came over he would find them too utterly washed out to jab a
bayonet into an ounce of butter, much less a man, and finally demanded
in disgust "if they were the only available Battalion in the Army and
whether they had to clean up the whole bloomin' Front?"

Once within the hospitable walls of Talbot House (can any Tommy ever
look back upon that oasis in war's grim desert without pangs of pleasant
memories) and ensconced deep down in armchairs they forget working
parties and fatigues.

From there they penned their difficult missives home-bound, there they
read and re-read what few lines of intimate information could be eagerly
cleaned from those brief treasured letters from home over the waters to
them.

There was something almost tragic in the downcast look of those who
turned their day's mail aimlessly over with anxious hands and at last
shamefacedly requested some sunny-natured fellow to read out what was
writ thereon. The awful reaping of ignorance, the great void of their
apathetic existence!

What pregnant apprehension of drawing blank pervaded the mind as the eye
expectantly watched the fast dwindling mail in the hands of the N.C.O.
bawling out each name. The exhilarating thrill of glad delight with
which you realised YOUR name and number had been called almost at the
end of the file ... the sense of lonely desolation when there has been
nothing for two days ... back to that torn copy of a magazine that has
been read, re-read, and re-read again and again. But you can't settle
down. They have forgotten you. You don't mind the hell of existence out
here, but their letter was due yesterday and now----"Bah!" bitterly,
"let them bloomin' well forget."

The Ten Hundred moved into Steenvoorde and found themselves entangled in
the intricacies of rehearsals for, and then later actual parade of
Ceremonial Reviews. Here also they had the opportunity of indulging in
that salient portion of training that appealed to them as nothing
else--"firing." Undamaged by shell, cosy, they would have appreciated a
lengthy spell with little to do, but rumours of an avalanche of troops
that were manoeuvring behind the enemy lines became the predominant