ne_ in dysentery cases was a gift of gold. Nor could
a Brigade have had a more gallant and untiring padre than Captain E.T.
Kerby. He and Captain Farrow both won the Military Cross. Kerby must
have said the burial service over the graves of nearly a thousand
Manchesters on Gallipoli.

The food difficulty we met by encouraging unofficial imports. The
kindness of all at home was beyond praise. Consignments of comforts were
well regulated by Major H.G. Davies, who had charge of the Manchester
depot, but many came direct from innumerable friends and national and
local organisations. One mother of two boys of the Battalion who had
lost their lives wrote to me, while sending parcels for their surviving
comrades: "I dare say that life is dreary for them, poor lads. God in
His mercy has been so very merciful in that my Darlings have been spared
so much. My prayers will follow you throughout, praying for the success
of the whole of Our Battalion, and that you may all be spared to come
safely home to the fond hearts waiting."

England need never despair while she has such mothers.

The great glory of the East Lancashire Division during the long-drawn
days of October and November was, however, the temper of its men. The
spiritual exaltation, that all races feel at the outbreak of war and in
the hour of battle, disappears under the pressure of the daily grind.
Then, in his divine good-nature, the British Tommy comes into his own.
Nothing dims his cheerfulness and humour. A chorus starting with: "We
are the M.G." proclaimed the jollity of our Machine Gun Section and the
ingenuity of Sergeant W. Harrison. A Machine Gun Corps of the larger
type, organised under the energetic command of Captain Hayes, was a
thing of the future. A long list of singers and performers--Hartnett,
Mort, Addison (of ragtime celebrity), Wheelton, Holbrook, Hoyle,
Clavering, Shields--adorned the programmes of our concerts. Other men
like Tabbron and F.E.H. Barratt were notably cheery souls in the lines.
The handful of surviving officers--Higham, Chadwick, Whitley,
Douglas--with a few excellent attached officers--J. Baker and J.W.
Barrett of the Somersets, and F.W. Woodward of the Sherwood
Foresters--were untiring promoters of the men's well-being.

Their wants were so modest. Old magazines and football editions of
Saturday evening papers, published a month or two earlier in England,
sufficed for their literary appetites. Lancashire boys are not brought
up