m to come to his own for lunch. I never saw him but with a smile of
infinite kindliness on his face, and I saw him very often.

Face swift to welcome, kindling eyes whose light
Saw all as friends, we shall not meet again!

Here in the aid-post sat the Cherub, struck at last, a flesh-wound in
his thigh; with many others. Next to him was Charles Copeman,
unwounded, waiting to go forward with his bombers. Presently came
Warren, bright and jaunty as a bird, and carrying his left arm. 'I'm
all right,' said Montag, 'got a cushy one here.' On his heels came
G.A.; his face was that of a man fresh from the Beatific Vision. Much
later, when I had managed to get transport to push him away, I asked
him, 'Got your stick, G.A.?' This was a stout stave on which he had
carved, patiently and skilfully, his name, 'H.T. Grant-Anderson,' and a
fierce and able-looking tiger at the top, then his regiment, then
curving round it the names of the actions in which it had supported
him: _Sannaiyat_, _Iron Bridge_, _Mushaidie_, _Beled Station_; while
down the line now he was to add _Istabulat-Samarra_. This famed work of
art he flaunted triumphantly as he climbed into the ambulance.

But with these, and before some of them, came very heavy news. By that
fatal wall and on the bullet-swept space before it died many of our
bravest. Hall, M.C., aged nineteen, who looked like Kipling's Afridi:

He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a
lance in rest;

Hall fell, facing the finish of our journey and those bright domes of
Samarra, already gilded from the sloping sun. His death was merciful, a
bullet through the heart; 'and sorrow came, not to him, but to those
who loved him.'

The theory was strongly held in the Leicestershires that the only way
was to advance steadily. This weakened the enemy's morale, and,
further, he had no chance to pick out his ranges accurately. To this
theory and practice of theirs they put down the fact that, though in
the forefront of all their battles, their losses were often so much
slighter than those of units that had acted more cautiously. I quote
again from Hasted's brilliant lecture on the battle:

There was no hesitation about the advance. Rushes were never more
than twenty yards, more often ten to fifteen yards, as hard as
one could go, and as flat as one could lie, at the end of it. The
theory, 'the best way of supporting a neighbouring unit is to
advance,' was ex