grey-haired adjutant, best of ex-ranker officers,
welcomed me on the farmhouse steps with a hard handshake and a
bellowing "Cheerio!" followed by, "Now that you're back, I can go on
leave."

In the mess the colonel gave me kindly greeting, and told me something
of the Brigade's ups and downs since I had left France in August 1917,
wounded at Zillebeke: how all the old and well-tried battery commanders
became casualties before 1917 was out, but how, under young, keen, and
patiently selected leaders, the batteries were working up towards real
efficiency again. Then old "Swiffy," the veterinary officer, came in,
and the new American doctor, who appeared armed with two copies of the
'Saturday Evening Post.' It was all very pleasant; and the feeling that
men who had got to know you properly in the filthy turmoil and strain
of Flanders were genuinely pleased to see you again, produced a glow of
real happiness. I had, of course, to go out and inspect the adjutant's
new charger--a big rattling chestnut, conceded to him by an A.S.C.
major. A mystery gift, if ever there was one: for he was a handsome
beast, and chargers are getting very rare in France. "They say he
bucks," explained the adjutant. "He'll go for weeks as quiet as a lamb,
and then put it across you when you don't expect it. I'm going to put
him under treatment."

"Where's my groom?" he roared. Following which there was elaborate
preparation of a weighted saddle--not up to the adjutant's 15 stone 5,
but enough to make the horse realise he was carrying something; then an
improvised lunging-rope was fashioned, and for twenty minutes the new
charger had to do a circus trot and canter, with the adjutant as a
critical and hopeful ringmaster. In the end the adjutant mounted and
rode off, shouting that he would be back in half an hour to report on
the mystery horse's preliminary behaviour.

Then the regimental sergeant-major manoeuvred me towards the horse
lines to look at the newly made-up telephone cart team.

"You remember the doctor's fat mare, sir--the wheeler, you used to call
her? Well, she is a wheeler now, and a splendid worker too. We got the
hand-wheeler from B Battery, and they make a perfect pair. And you
remember the little horse who strayed into our lines at
Thiepval--'Punch' we used to call him--as fat as butter, and didn't
like his head touched? Well, he's in the lead; and another bay, a twin
to him, that the adjutant got from the --th Division. Change