challenge from a sentry. The British Expeditionary Force
seemed to be sleeping. They needed sleep--poor beggars!--but the Germans
did not let them take much.

Colonel Childs went into the Commander-in-Chief's chateau and found a
soldier in the front hall, licking out a jam-pot.

"Where's the Commander-in-Chief?" asked the officer.

"Gone hours ago, sir," said the soldier. "I was left behind for lack
of transport. From what I hear the Germans ought to be here by now. I
rather fancy I heard some shots pretty close awhile ago."

Colonel Childs walked back to his own quarters quickly. He made no
apology for interrupting the work of the adjutant-general.

"General, the whole box of tricks has gone. We've been left behind.
Forgotten!"

"The dirty dogs!" said General Macready.

There was not much time for packing up, and only one motor-car, and only
one rifle. The general said he would look after the rifle, but Colonel
Childs said if that were so he would rather stay behind and take
his chance of being captured. It would be safer for him. So the
adjutant-general, the judge advocate, the deputy assistant judge
advocate (Colonel Childs), and an orderly or two packed into the car and
set out to find G.H.Q. Before they found it they had to run the gantlet
of Germans, and were sniped all the way through a wood, and took flying
shots at moving figures. Then, miles away, they found G.H.Q.

"And weren't they sorry to see me again!" said General Macready, who
told me the tale. "They thought they had lost me forever."

The day's casualty list was brought into the adjutant--general one
evening when I was dining in his mess. The orderly put it down by the
side of his plate, and he interrupted a funny story to glance down the
columns of names.

"Du Maurier has been killed... I'm sorry."

He put down the paper beside his plate again and continued his story,
and we all laughed heartily at the end of the anecdote. It was the only
way, and the soldier's way. There was no hugging of grief when our best
friend fell. A sigh, another ghost in one's life, and then, "Carry on!"

XVIII

Scores of times, hundreds of times, during the battles of the Somme,
I passed the headquarters of Gen. Sir Henry Rawlinson, commanding
the Fourth Army, and several times I met the army commander there
and elsewhere. One of my first meetings with him was extraordinarily
embarrassing to me for a moment or two. While he was organizing his
army, w