When Winterbourne inspected his company on the first day, his heart sank within him. He felt it was monstrous to send these scared-looking boys into the line without a proper stiffening of more experienced men. It would have been far better to spread them out. They cleaned their buttons perfectly, drilled very neatly, turned right or left with an imitation Guards stamp, and trembled when an officer spoke to them. But they were mighty raw stuff for the job ahead of them. Winterbourne thought of his own greenness when he had first gone into the line, and his heart sank lower as he thought of his own utter inexperience as an officer. He had a very sketchy idea of how a Company was run in the line. Of course, he had heard and carried orders, and had been roughly schooled in Company organization—on paper—at the Cadet School. But that was very different from assuming the responsibility for a hundred and more men, most of them frightened boys who had never seen any but practice trenches and never heard a shell burst. Well, the only thing was to carry on, and do his best.... * * * * * The Division was to take over part of the M—— sector, from the Canadian Army. Winterbourne had to occupy part of the Reserve line just to the left of M——. The four Company commanders with their Runners were sent on ahead in a lorry to reconnoitre the positions and arrange details of “taking over.” The Colonel particularly impressed upon Winterbourne the necessity for obtaining and carefully reading the written instructions for defence which would be with the Officer he was relieving. They were to have met Canadian guides at a given rendezvous, but the guides were not there. Winterbourne, who could have found his way to M—— in the blackest darkness, and who had twenty times passed up and down the trench he was to occupy, decided to push on. The other three, mistrusting him, stayed. He set out with Baker, his servant and runner. Owing to the shortage of men, the officers’ servants had to act as runners, with the result that they performed both jobs abominably. Baker had been allotted to Winterbourne by the despotic Colonel, who interfered in the minutest details and then held the Company commander responsible for everything which went wrong. Thus, he was in a position to take credit for every success and push off the responsibility for failure on some one else. Winterbourne would certainly not have chosen Baker for himself, and wondered what possible caprice of the Colonel had forced the boy on him. He was a decent enough lad—a milliner’s delivery boy—but timid, unintelligent and lazy. Baker seemed to think that he had performed all his duties as a Runner if he followed Winterbourne so closely that he continually trod on his officer’s heels.