ploying
the knowledge gained during the strenuous days he had spent in France
and Flanders, he not only won the confidence of the troops but
improved their tone, and by degrees brought them up to something
approaching the level of the best fighting divisions of our Army in
France.

This was hard work during hot weather when our trench systems on a
wide front had to be prepared against an active enemy, and men could
ill be spared for the all-important task of training behind the front
line. It was not long, however, before troops who had got into that
state of lassitude which is engendered by a belief that they were
settling down to trench warfare for the duration of the war--that,
in fact, there was a stalemate on this front--became inspired by the
energy of General Chetwode. They saw him in the front line almost
every day, facing the risks they ran themselves, complimenting them
on any good piece of work, suggesting improvements in their defences,
always anxious to provide anything possible for their comfort, and
generally looking after the rank and file with a detailed attention
which no good battalion commander could exceed.

The men knew that the long visits General Chetwode paid them formed
but a small part of his daily task. It has been said that a G.O.C. of
a force has to think one hour a day about operations and five hours
about beef. In East Force, as this part of the Egyptian Expeditionary
Force was then called, General Chetwode, having to look months ahead,
had also six worrying hours a day to think about water. For any one
who did not love his profession, or who had not an ardent soldierly
spirit within him, such a daily task would have been impossible. I had
the privilege of living in General Chetwode's camp for some time, and
I have seen him working at four o'clock in the morning and at nine
o'clock at night, and the notes on a writing tablet by the side of his
rough camp-bed showed that in the hours when sleep forsook him he was
planning the next day's work.

His staff was entirely composed of hard workers, and perhaps no
command in this war ever had so small a staff, but there was no
officer in East Force who laboured so long or with such concentration
and energy and determination as its Chief. This enthusiasm was
infectious and spread through all ranks. The sick rate declined,
septic sores, from which many men suffered through rough life in the
desert on Army rations, got better, and the men showed