d in the afternoon. Has any one ever done that at Buckingham
Palace?

However, as I say, they have got used to us now. We fall in for our
diurnal labours in comparative solitude, usually in heavy rain and
without pomp. We are fairly into the collar by this time. We have been
worked desperately hard for more than four months; we are grunting
doggedly away at our job, not because we like it, but because we know
it is the only thing to do. To march, to dig, to extend, to close; to
practise advance-guards and rear-guards, and pickets, in fair weather
or foul, often with empty stomachs--that is our daily and sometimes
our nightly programme. We are growing more and more efficient, and
our powers of endurance are increasing. But, as already stated, we no
longer go about our task like singing birds.

It is a quarter to nine in the morning. All down the street doors are
opening, and men appear, tugging at their equipment. (Yes, we are
partially equipped now.) Most of B Company live in this street. They
are fortunate, for only two or three are billeted in each little
house, where they are quite domestic pets by this time. Their
billeting includes "subsistence," which means that they are catered
for by an experienced female instead of a male cooking-class still in
the elementary stages of its art.

"A" are not so fortunate. They are living in barns or hay-lofts,
sleeping on the floor, eating on the floor, existing on the floor
generally. Their food is cooked (by the earnest band of students
aforementioned) in open-air camp-kitchens; and in this weather it is
sometimes difficult to keep the fires alight, and not always possible
to kindle them.

"D" are a shade better off. They occupy a large empty mansion at the
end of the street. It does not contain a stick of furniture; but there
are fireplaces (with Adam mantelpieces), and the one thing of which
the War Office never seems to stint us is coal. So "D" are warm,
anyhow. Thirty men live in the drawing-room. Its late tenant would
probably be impressed with its new scheme of upholstery. On the floor,
straw palliasses and gravy. On the walls, "cigarette photties"--by the
way, the children down here call them "fag picters." Across the room
run clothes-lines, bearing steaming garments (and tell it not in
Gath!) an occasional hare skin.

"C" are billeted in a village two miles away, and we see them but
rarely.

The rain has ceased for a brief space--it always does about parade
ti