We sailed for England on the Dutch liner New Amsterdam and landed at Falmouth, passing through a cordon of mine-sweepers and small patrols as we neared the English shores. My wife's offer to work in France not being accepted, since I held the rank of Major, we ran down to my old home, where she decided to spend most of her time. My uniform and kit were ready in a few days; and in spite of the multitudinous calls on the War Office officials, I can say in defence of red tape that my papers were made out very quickly. I was thus able to leave promptly for Boulogne, near which I joined the other members of my Unit, who had preceded me by a fortnight. It was Christmas and the snow was on the ground when I arrived in France. There was much talk of trench feet and the cold. Our life in the North had afforded experiences more like those at the front than most people's. We are forced to try and obtain warmth and mobility combined with economy, especially in food and clothing. At the request of the editor, I therefore sent to the "British Medical Journal" a summary of deductions from our Northern experiences. Clothes only keep heat in and damp out. Thickness, not even fur, will warm a statue, and our ideal has been to obtain light, wind-and water-proof material, and a pattern that prevents leakage of the body's heat from the neck, wrists, waist, knees, and ankles. Our skin boots, by being soft, water-tight, and roomy, remove the causes of trench feet. Later when I returned to England I was invited to the War Office to talk over the matter. The defects, either in wet and cold or in hot weather, of woolen khaki cloth are obvious, and when subsequently I visited the naval authorities in Washington about the same subject, I was delighted to be assured that on all small naval craft our patterns were being exclusively used. Who introduced them did not matter. I had also advocated a removable insert of sheet steel in a pocket on the breast of the tunic, this plate to be kept in the trenches and inserted on advancing; and a lobster-tail steel knee-piece in the knickers. Of this latter Sir Robert Jones, the British orthopedic chief, appreciated the value, knowing how many splendid men are put _hors de combat_ by tiny pieces of shell splinters infecting that joint. But the "Journal" censored all these references to armour. A wounded Frenchman at Berck presented me with a helmet heavily dented by shrapnel, and told me that he owed his life to it. Later at General Headquarters, General Sir Arthur Sloggett showed me a collection of a dozen experimental helmets, each of which stood for a saved life. One of the soldiers who came under my care had a bullet wound through the palm of his hand. I happened to ask him where his hand had been when hit. He said, "On my hip. We were mending a break in our barbed wire at night, and a fixed rifle got me, exactly where it got my chum just afterwards, but it went through him." "Where did your bullet go?"