Now, the ordinary combatant officer who perhaps will read these lines may expect a diatribe against what the boys call, "the brass-hats," but, if so, he will be grievously disappointed. Outside the fact that Staff Officers, like Medical Officers, are a necessary evil, the writer has the vivid recollection of one occasion on which he might have been court-martialed, and perhaps shot, for _lèse majesté_, or something akin to it, but for the good humor of a well-known Brigadier General. So there will be no scathing denunciation of Staff Officers here. At noon I was sitting in a dugout in the lines when I received an order to immediately relieve Captain ----, of the --steenth Canadian Battalion. The order gave no information as to the whereabouts of this Battalion, and as it turned out the order had been wrongly transmitted, and I had been directed to go to a Battalion which was not on our front. However, I did not know this at the time, and so, I quickly got my things together, hung my steel hat, my cap, haversack, pack, overcoat, stick, and other odds and ends on various parts of my person,--for an officer, like a private, seems to be made to hang things upon. To get out of the lines to where I was to be met by an ambulance was a long, hard trudge. The ambulance was over one hour late, and hours followed in which we searched everywhere to find a trace of the Battalion. Night came on and we were still searching, and as no food had accompanied us, and a mixture of snow and rain was falling, I was cold, wet, hungry and pugnacious, when I entered a Headquarters in order to try to get some information. Forgetting I was only a Captain, and stalking angrily in, I demanded:-- "Where the hell is the --steenth Battalion?" An officer rose, came forward and smilingly asked me what the trouble was. "I have been hunting for hours," I replied hotly, not even looking for his rank, "searching for this bally Battalion, and I'm fed up to the neck with being pushed around like a basket of fruit," for I had had many moves recently. "And a pretty healthy looking basket of fruit you are, too," he returned with a good-humored laugh, while he proceeded to put me on the right track, and at last I noted his rank. He was the General of my Brigade. So now you have the reason that I will say nothing against Staff Officers. A story akin to this of an incident that happened in one of our trenches may be worth relating, though it has nothing to do with Staff Officers. My Colonel who always, even in his busiest times, had a vivid sense of humor, was sitting in his dugout when a Tommy's voice yelled down:-- "Say, Bub, how do we get to the Vistula railhead from here?" The Colonel's voice floated up giving directions. But the Tommy, thinking he was talking to another Private, said:--