with green beetles running through the eye-holes . . . anything--
trivial, childlike details.

I remember reading an article in a magazine which stated that under
fire, and more especially in a charge, a man moves in a whirl of
excitement which blots out all the small realities around him, all the
"local colour." He remembers nothing but a wild, mad rush, or the
tense intensity of the danger he is in.

It is not so. The greater the danger and the more exciting the
position the more intensely does the mind receive the imprint of tiny
commonplace objects.

Memories of Egypt and the Mediterranean are far more a jumble of
general effects of colour, sound and smell.

The closer we crept to the shores of Suvla Bay, and the deathbed of
the Salt Lake, the more exact and vivid are the impressions; the one
is like an impressionist sketch--blobs and dabs and great sloshy
washes; but the memories of Pear-tree Gully, of the Kapanja Sirt, and
Chocolate Hill are drawn in with a fine mapping pen and Indian ink--
like a Rackham fairy-book illustration--every blade of dead grass,
every ripple of blue, every pink pebble; and towards the firing-line I
could draw it now, every inch of the way up the hills with every stone
and jagged rock in the right place.

Before sailing from England I had bought a little colour-box, one good
sable brush, and a few H.B. pencils--these and a sketch-book which my
father gave me I carried everywhere in my haversack. The pocket-book
was specially made with paper which would take pencil, colour, crayon,