nows; "we're not going till June the twenty-seventh."

The adjutant, light duty, is replaced by an adjutant, general service.
Mobilisation stores begin to trickle into the quartermaster's reservoir.
But on June 27 the stores are far from ready, and July 6 is miraged as
the next Date. This time it looks like business. The war equipment is
completed, except for the identity discs.

On July 4 a large detachment departs, after twelve hours' notice, to
replace casualties in France. Those remaining in the now incomplete unit
grow wearily sarcastic. More last leave is granted. The camp is given
over to rumour. An orderly, delivering a message to the C.O. (formerly
stationed in India) at the latter's quarters, notes a light cotton tunic
and two sun-helmets. Sun-helmets? Ah, somewhere East, of course. The men
tell each other forthwith that their destination has been changed to
Mesopotamia.

A band of strangers report in place of the draft that went to France,
and in them the N.C.O.'s plant _esprit de corps_ and the fear of God.
The missing identity discs arrive, and a fourth Date is fixed--July 21.
And the dwellers in the blinking hole, having been wolfed several
times, are sceptical, and treat the latest report as a bad joke.

"My dear man," remarks the subaltern-who-knows, "it's only some more hot
air. I never believed in the other dates, and I don't believe in this.
If there's one day of the three hundred and sixty-five when we shan't
go, it's July the twenty-first."

And at dawn on July 21 the battalion, battery, or squadron moves
unobtrusively to a port of embarkation for France.

Whereas in most branches of the army the foundation of this scaffolding
of postponement is indistinct except to the second-sighted Staff, in the
case of the Flying Corps it is definitely based on that uncertain
quantity, the supply of aeroplanes. The organisation of personnel is not
a difficult task, for all are highly trained beforehand. The pilots have
passed their tests and been decorated with wings, and the mechanics have
already learned their separate trades as riggers, fitters, carpenters,
sailmakers, and the like. The only training necessary for the pilot is
to fly as often as possible on the type of bus he will use in France,
and to benefit by the experience of the flight-commanders, who as a
rule have spent a hundred or two hours over Archie and the enemy lines.
As regards the mechanics, the quality of their skilled work is tempered