between the officer and his men. They
sent me out to South Africa during the trouble and I brought a
detachment into a country village. It seemed quite unpromising but I
was told of a sort of place 3 miles in the country that you would call
a chateau in France. So I cantered out and spent the night, turning my
men over to a sergeant-major. After a refreshing breakfast along in
the middle of the morning--the late middle of the morning--I rode back
into town, but try as I might I could not locate a single one of my
men.

"Now nothing, you know, is as ineffective in a war as an officer
without his men. Well, I spent the day in agony and it was not until
along at dusk that the first of the blighters straggled in--quite
drunk, all of them, and swearing to a man that they had engaged in
five ferocious battles. It seems that about 2 miles away, in a barn,
they had come on a hogshead of ginger brandy, and had stayed with it
to the bitter end. Need I say that it was a great lesson to me, and
that from then on I was never billeted farther than 15 rods from my
men.

"As a matter of fact, I love ginger brandy."

Or this, in which the whole lesson of exactitude in the written
communication is implicit:

"Now on the subject of messages, it might be well to say immediately
that as far as I know no one ever received a written message during a
battle. They may be written, but that I think is as far as it goes.
However, they are occasionally received before and after battles, and
in this connection let me say that it is no earthly good writing
generalities to signify times and places.

"I mean to say, suppose you are writing a message and you write
'Report after breakfast.' Well, to Sergeant Ramrod it might mean
stand-to at 3 in the morning; while to Captain Brighteyes it would
mean, say, 8 o'clock. But to Colonel Blue-fish it would signify some
time after 11, depending quite a bit on how the old fellow felt.

"So it is better to say 7 o'clock in the morning, if that is what you
mean, for after all there is only one 7 o'clock in the morning. And,
by the way, I must warn you chaps against the champagne on sale in the
Cafe de l'Univers down here in the square. It is made in the
basement--of potatoes."

On as simple and basic a thing as continuing liaison between small
units, the Colonel's listeners never forgot his elementary parable:

"One rule is about all a chap can handle in a battle, and as good a
one as any to remember is