The cadets in his class were fascinated by this singular and brilliant personality, and loved him with a "schoolboy heat." One of them tells how he seemed more one of themselves than the other professors; another remembers how he treated them as gentlemen, instead of regarding them as schoolboys; another that he was full of sympathy when anything needed explanation; another that if he found out and fell upon some little meanness with the weight of his own uprightness, he would gave the culprit from official correction {37} thus win him as a disciple; another, writing at the time of his death, speaks of Gatacre's influence for good throughout his career. Another, who has afforded me very real assistance in this narrative, tells us that he felt such a genuine hero-worship for Captain Gatacre that he applied for the 77th Regiment in order to serve under him. This cadet not only passed well, but, being a protégé of General William Napier, who was then Governor of the College, might have got himself gazetted into any regiment that he liked to name. After serving four years as a military instructor, Gatacre was appointed temporarily to the post of Deputy Assistant Quarter-Master-General on the Headquarters Staff at Aldershot. This was his first experience of staff work. The following winter a new field-service equipment was engaging much attention; this was, of course, worked out in the office in which Gatacre was employed. He writes with some satisfaction of the "mess-tin invented by me" being approved and adopted. {38} CHAPTER III 1880-1883 RANGOON [Sidenote: 1880] At the expiration of his term of office at Aldershot, in May 1880, Captain Gatacre took short leave home, and then rejoined the 77th at Dover. The regiment had been already warned for India in the next trooping season, but the news of our misfortune at Maiwand hastened their departure, and in August 1880 they were hurriedly embarked at only a fortnight's notice. To Gatacre the hope of seeing active service must have more than compensated for a disappointment he had expressed at not getting another staff billet. This hope, however, vanished on their arrival at Bombay, where the regiment learnt that the defeat of Ayub Khan outside Khandahar on September 2 had brought the campaign to a conclusion. The battalion was landed at Bombay on September 10, and made its way by road to Madras. [Sidenote: On the staff]