put him ashore.

Meanwhile at Gwalior a pleasant surprise was in store. We had "train
rations" on the usual measly Indian scale, but for tea on Saturday we
were to rely on tea provided by Scindia at Gwalior. Happily a
Maharajah's ideas of tea are superior to a Quartermaster's, and this
is what we had for fifty men! Unlimited tea, with sugar, twenty-five
tinned cheeses, fifty tins of sausages and twenty-five 2lb. tins of
Marie biscuits! This feed tinted the rest of the journey rose-colour.

The only other incident was the loss by one of the men of his
haversack, which he dropped out of window.

Yesterday, Sunday, was much cooler. When I woke at Bhopal it was only
76° and it only got even as high as 89° for about half-an-hour. We ran
into rain in the afternoon.

We reached Bhusawal at 7 p.m. and had to wait four hours to be picked
up by the Nagpur mail. In the refreshment room I met a Terrier gunner
officer who was P.M.C. of the Mess at Barrackpore when we messed there
in December. He was just back from a course at Mhow and had been
positively told by the Staff Officers there that his and most other T.
batteries were to be sent back to Europe in a month's time: and
moreover that a whole division of Ts. was going to the Persian Gulf
and another to E. Africa.

The air is full of such rumours. Here the Embarkation N.C.O. says
78,000 K's have already sailed to relieve us. But the mere number of
the rumours rather discredits them. And the fact of their using us for
drafts to P.G. seems to show they don't intend moving the units.