he declared with embellishments that he never wanted to see the ----
thing again. "Take it, and be ---- to it!" he said.

Curiously enough, the Subaltern was able to stick to the loan through
all the troubles that followed, and was eventually able to return it to
its owner, met casually in the London Hippodrome, months later.

Soon afterwards, when they were marching through a village called
Chaumes, he learnt that in the forthcoming battle they were to be in
General Reserve, and this relieved the nervous tension for the moment.
There was a feeling that a great chance of distinguished service was
lost, but as the General Reserves are usually flung into the fight
towards its concluding stages, he did not worry on that score.

The four Regiments of the Brigade were massed in very close formation in
a large orchard, ready to move at a moment's notice. There they lay all
day, sleeping with their rifles in their hands, or lying flat on their
backs gazing at the intense blue of the sky overhead.

The heat, although they were in the first week in September, was greater
than ever. The blue atmosphere seemed to quiver with the shock of guns.

General Headquarters had been established in a house near by, a
middle-class, flamboyant, jerry-built affair. How its owner would have
gasped if he could have seen the Field-Marshal conducting the British
share of the great battle in his immodest "salle à manger!"

Aeroplanes were continually ascending from and descending to a ploughed
field adjacent to the orchard. Motors were ceaselessly dashing up and
down. Assuredly they were near to the heart of things.