four of us, all British officers, were dining, and
said, "You're English, aren't you? Well, have you been with any of 'our
boys'?... Have you seen them in action?... They're fine, aren't they?"
We were surprised, a little taken aback at first, but we showed
sympathetic understanding of the American lady's enthusiasm, and
responded in a manner that left her pleased as ever.

Before returning to the Front I got in a day's golf at La Boulie, and
also made a train journey to a village the other side of Fontainebleau,
where an old friend, invalided from the French army, had settled on a
considerable estate, and thought of nothing but the fruits and
vegetables and dairy produce he was striving to improve and increase. I
did not visit many theatres; it struck me that the Paris stage, like
that of London, was undergoing a war phase--unsophisticated,
ready-to-be-pleased audiences bringing prosperity to very mediocre
plays.

* * * * *

My journey back to the line included a stay at a depot where officers
were speedily reminded that they had left the smooth luxuriousness of
Paris behind them. The mess regulations opened with "Try to treat the
mess as a mess and not as a public-house," and contained such
additional instructions as, "Do not place glasses on the floor," and
"Officers will always see that they are in possession of sufficient
cash to pay mess bills."

I found the brigade three and a half miles in advance of where I had
left them. There had been a lot of stiff fighting, and on our front the
British forces had not gone so far forward as the corps immediately
south of us had done. Big things were afoot, however, and that very
night batteries and Brigade Headquarters moved up another three
thousand yards. A snack of bully beef and bread and cheese at 7 P.M.,
and the colonel and a monocled Irish major, who was working under the
colonel as "learner" for command of a brigade, went off to see the
batteries. The adjutant and myself, bound for the new Headquarters,
followed ten minutes later.

"You know that poor old Lamswell has gone," he said, as we crossed a
grassy stretch, taking a ruined aerodrome as our guiding mark. "Poor
chap, he was wounded at the battery position the day after you left.
Only a slight wound in the leg from a gas-shell, and every one thought
he had got a comfortable 'Blighty.' But gangrene set in, and he was
dead in three days. Beastly things those gas-shells!... Kent