in action turns the country in front of them into a nightmare of
noise--'a terrific and intolerable noise' in Froissart's phrase. The
incessant slamming of the guns makes it impossible to hear enemy shells
coming. The first intimation is their arrival. But the orderlies go
backwards and forwards through it all with superb courage. Wounded
trickle down the trolley line to the dressing station, and an occasional
group of prisoners come through. It was on a day like this that I saw
Davidson and Rainie for the last time. When The Royals were moved up
from the support trenches to take over from the battalion which had
delivered the attack at St. Eloi, some one said to Captain Davidson, who
was going up at the head of his company through a terrible barrage,
'This is going to be a risky affair.' 'Yes,' he replied, 'but it's not
our business whether it's risky or not. My orders are to go through.'
Soon after he fell. He was barely twenty years of age.


II

_'I hate war: that is why I am fighting'_

There is a garden in Vlamertynghe with a marble seat overturned beside a
smashed tree, a corner just made for lovers, once. An enormous crump
hole fills the greater part of the garden, and the wall has fallen
outwards in one mass leaving the fruit trees standing in a line, their
arms outstretched. Across on the other side of the road Captain Norman
Stewart lies buried. But his memory lives in the hearts of men, and
wherever the 2nd battalion gathers round its braziers and in the glow of
them the stories of the heroes of the regiment are passed on from the
veterans to the younger men, Stewart will be remembered with reverence
as one who not only upheld but created regimental tradition.