look back--not merely from these ridges, but from certain
moral ridges as well--over the ground which has been successfully
traversed, and you can marvel for the hundredth time, not that the
thing was well or badly done, but that it was ever done at all.

But while this narrative was being written, none of these things had
happened. We were still struggling uphill, with inadequate resources.
So, since the incidents of the story were set down, in the main, as
they occurred and when they occurred, the reader will find very little
perspective, a great deal of the mood of the moment, and none at all
of that profound wisdom which comes after the event. For the latter he
must look home--to the lower walks of journalism and the back benches
of the House of Commons.

It is not proposed to carry this story to a third volume. The First
Hundred Thousand, as such, are no more. Like the "Old Contemptibles,"
they are now merged in a greater and more victorious army--in an armed
nation, in fact. And, as Sergeant Mucklewame once observed to
me, "There's no that mony of us left now, onyways." So with all
reverence--remembering how, when they were needed most, these men did
not pause to reason why or count the cost, but came at once--we bid
them good-bye.

CONTENTS

I. WINTER QUARTERS
II. SHELL OUT!
III. WINTER SPORTS: VARIOUS
IV. THE PUSH THAT FAILED
V. UNBENDING THE BOW
VI. YE MERRIE BUZZERS
VII. PASTURES NEW
VIII. "THE NON-COMBATANT"
IX. TUNING UP
X. FULL CHORUS
XI. THE LAST SOLO
XII. RECESSIONAL
XIII. "TWO OLD SOLDIERS, BROKEN IN THE WARS"

ALL IN IT

"K (1)" Carries On

I

WINTER QUARTERS

I

We are getting into our stride again. Two months ago we trudged
into Bethune, gaunt, dirty, soaked to the skin, and reduced to a
comparative handful. None of us had had his clothes off for a week.
Our ankle-puttees had long dropped to pieces, and our hose-tops,
having worked under the soles of our boots, had been cut away and
discarded. The result was a bare and mud-splashed expanse of leg from
boot to kilt, except in the case of the enterprising few who had
devised artistic spat-puttees out of an old sandbag. Our headgear
consisted in a few cases of the regulation Balmoral bonnet, usually
minus "toorie" and badge; in a few more, of the battered remains of a
gas helmet; and in the great majority, of a woollen cap-comforter. We
were bearded like that incomparable fighter, the _poilu_, and we were
se