upport. In that case you are held back
until the battle has progressed a stage or two, when you advance with
fixed bayonets to prod your own firing line into a further display of
valour and agility.

Or you may be detailed as Reserve. Membership of Brigade Reserve
should be avoided. You are liable to be called upon at any moment
to forsake the sheltered wood or lee of a barn under which you are
huddling, and double madly up a hill or along a side road, tripping
heavily over ingenious entanglements composed of the telephone wires
of your own signallers, to enfilade some unwary detachment of the
enemy or repel a flank attack. On the other hand, if you are ordered
to act as Divisional Reserve, you may select the softest spot on the
hillside behind which you are sheltering, get out your haversack
ration, and prepare to spend an extremely peaceful (or extremely dull)
day. Mimic warfare enjoys one enormous advantage over the genuine
article: battles--provided you are not out for the night--_must
always_ end in time for the men to get back to their dinners at five
o'clock. Under this inexorable law it follows that, by the time the
General has got into touch with the enemy and brought his firing line,
supports, and local reserves into action, it is time to go home. So
about three o'clock the bugles sound, and the combatants, hot and
grimy, fall back into close order at the point of deployment, where
they are presently joined by the Divisional Reserve, blue-faced and
watery-eyed with cold. This done, principals and understudies, casting
envious glances at one another, form one long column of route and set
out for home, in charge of the subalterns. The senior officers trot
off to the "pow-wow," there, with the utmost humility and deference,
to extol their own tactical dispositions, belittle the achievements of
the enemy, and impugn the veracity of one another.

Thus the day's work ends. Our divisional column, with its trim,
sturdy, infantry battalions, its jingling cavalry and artillery, its
real live staff, and its imposing transport train, sets us thinking,
by sheer force of contrast, of that dim and distant time seven months
ago, when we wrestled perspiringly all through long and hot September
days, on a dusty barrack square, with squad upon squad of dazed and
refractory barbarians, who only ceased shuffling their feet in order
to expectorate. And these are the self-same men! Never was there a
more complete vindication of th