“Wer Arbeit hat und sich nicht drückt, Der ist verrückt.” (“Who has got work and does not shirk, He is a fool.”) The whole art of life, not only of these working-men but of all other German working-men I met, could be summed up in that proverb. The mere fact of being idle afforded an exquisite pleasure to these people. The sergeant in time took pity on me and dispensed me from the necessity of coming at all. And so my poor feet, which were supposed to be too weak for marching, used to carry me over hill and dale, by forest and meadow, through all the surroundings of Cassel. By the time I had finished, I was “some” malingerer. [SN: TRAINING] It would take me too long to detail all the delightful accidents that befell me. Suffice it to say that it was not till the middle of July that I began my full training, and on the 17th August I was sent to the front. At that time I had never been on patrol, or dug a trench, or seen a bomb. I had fired about ten rounds of live ammunition, and I scarcely knew one end of the bayonet from another. It is true that when I came out of hospital I had to go to a bayonet class. I had never been there before, and of course could not handle a bayonet properly. The instructor shouted, “Here, you there, you know nothing about bayonets, go back to the ranks.” He was only a country policeman, and it did not seem to strike him that the less I knew the more he had to teach me. Once the lieutenant in his tour of inspection invited me to have a fencing match with him. I suppose he thought that as an educated man I would have learnt my drill, and that we should give the company a high-class exhibition of fencing with the bayonet. Instead of which, I went for him like a wild cat and chased him round the quad. He came back, panting and tired, but quite good-natured, and he seemed rather to have enjoyed the experience. I had never been taught any of those thousand and one things which are so necessary in the field. I could not roll my mantle, the N.C.O. had to do that for me, when I set out for the front. I had only once taken a rifle to pieces and cleaned it. All this means little to the layman, perhaps, but the soldier will read it with a grim smile. The fact was all the corporals said, “You’ll not go out with us, you are too far behind. You must wait and get trained with the next lot.” I had tried to get transferred to a stretcher-bearer corps, but the sergeant-major said I must first finish my training, and that would take me three months yet. The same day he reported me as fit to go to the front. I protested to the captain that I was quite untrained, and he only answered, “You have been reported to me as fit to go to the front, and to the front you must go.”