were cut off, hemmed in, and at last wiped out,
the entire division. The last men, a mixed batch of Grenadiers,
Coldstream, Scots, Irish, and Welsh, perished in a final glorious
bayonet charge. It was a Guardsman who told me the story first, and
he had it from what really was unimpeachable authority.

But there is no reason for railing against Rumour. She is a wild-eyed
jade, no doubt, with disordered locks and a babbling tongue. But life
at a base in France would be duller without her; and she does no one
any real harm.

CHAPTER VII

COMING AND GOING

The camp in which I lived was the first in the series of camps which
stretched along the whole winding valley. We were nearest to the
entrance gates, at which military police were perpetually on guard;
nearest to the railway station, a wayside _halte_ where few trains
stopped; nearest to the road along which the trams ran into the town.
All who came and went in and out passed by our camp, using a road,
made, I think, by our men originally, which ran along the bottom of
our parade ground and thence, with many side roads branching from it,
through all the camps right along the valley. Our parade ground
sloped down towards this road, ending in a steep bank which we tried
to keep pleasantly grassy, which we crowned with flower-beds, so that
new-comers might feel that they had arrived at a pleasant place.

Standing on this bank it was possible to watch all the entering and
departing traffic of the camps, the motor lorries which rumbled by,
the little road engines, always somewhat comic, which puffed and
snorted, dragging trucks after them. Now and then came the motors of
generals and other potentates, or the shabby, overworked Fords of the
Y.M.C.A. Mounted officers, colonels, and camp commandants who were
privileged to keep horses, trotted by. Orderlies on bicycles went
perilously, for the road was narrow and motor lorries are big. A
constant stream of officers and men passed by; or parties, on their
way up the hill, to one of the instruction camps marched along.

This went on all day from early dawn till the "Last Post" sounded and
quiet came. To a new-comer, as I was, one unused to armies and their
ways, this traffic was a source of endless interest; but I liked most
to stand on the bank above the road during the later hours of the
forenoon. It was then that the new drafts, men fresh from England,
marched in.

The transports which brought them reached the h