to hold the tanks in readiness in case
they were needed, no necessity arose, and after a few hours' waiting,
the Major sent word to him to start the tanks back to the embankment,
there to be kept for the next occasion. Better still, the men were to
be taken back to B---- in the motor lorries, just as they had been
after the first battle. Water, comparative quiet, blankets,--these
were the luxuries that lay before them.

As he sat crowded into the swaying motor lorry that lurched back along
the shell-torn road to B----, Talbot slipped his hand into his pocket.
He touched a cheque-book, a package of cigarettes, and a razor. Then
he smiled. They were the final preparations he had made that morning
before he went into action. After all he had not needed them, but one
never could tell, one might be taken prisoner. One needed no such
material preparations against the possibility of death, but a
prisoner--that was different.

The cheque-book had been for use in a possible gray prison camp in the
land of his enemies. Cheques would some time or other reach his
English bank and his people would know that he was, at least, alive.
The cigarettes were to keep up his courage in the face of whatever
disaster might befall him.

And the razor? Most important of all.

The razor was to keep, bright and untarnished, the traditions and
prestige of the British Army!

VIII

REST AND DISCIPLINE

We stayed in that region of the Front for a few more weeks, preparing
for any other task that might be demanded of us. One day the Battalion
received its orders to pack up, to load the tanks that were left over,
and to be ready for its return to the district in which we had spent
the winter.

We entrained on a Saturday evening at A----, and arrived at St.-P----
at about ten o'clock on Sunday night. From there a twelve-mile march
lay before us to our old billets in B----. As may well be imagined,
the men, though tired, were in high spirits. We simply ate up the
distance, and the troops disguised their fatigue by singing songs.
There were two which appeared to be favorites on this occasion.

One, to the tune of "The Church's One Foundation," ran as follows:--

"We are Fred Karno's[1] Army,
The ragtime A.S.C.,[2]
We cannot work, we do not fight,
So what ruddy use are we?
And when we get to Berlin,
The Kaiser he will say,
Hoch, hoch, mein Gott!
What a ruddy rotten lot,
Is the ragtime A.S.C."