I used to look forward to our spells in trenches at Laventie. Billet life meant battalion mess, also riding-school, which I found rather worse than the Surrey-man had described it. Parades were carried out with peace-time punctiliousness and smartness, especially the daily battalion guard-changing which every now and then, when I was orderly officer, it was my duty to supervise. On one occasion, after the guard-changing ceremony and inspection were over and I was about to dismiss the old guard, I saw Buzz Off cross the village street from one company headquarters to another. As he crossed I called the guard to attention and saluted. I waited for a few seconds and then dismissed the guard, but he had not really gone into the biliet; he had been waiting in the doorway. As soon as I dismissed the guard he dashed out with a great show of anger. ‘As you were, as you were, stand fast!’ he shouted to the guard. And then to me: ‘Why in hell’s name, Mr. Graves, didn’t you ask my permission to dismiss the parade? You’ve read the King’s Regulations, haven’t you? And where the devil are your manners, anyhow?’ I apologized. I said that I thought he had gone into the house. This made matters worse. He bellowed at me for arguing; then he asked me where I had learned to salute. ‘At the depot, sir,’ I answered. ‘Then, by heaven, Mr. Graves, you’ll have to learn to salute as the battalion does. You will parade every morning before breakfast for a month under Staff-sergeant Evans and do an hour’s saluting drill.’ Then he turned to the guard and dismissed them himself. This was not a particular act of spite against me but the general game of ‘chasing the warts,’ at which all the senior officers played. It was honestly intended to make us better soldiers. I had been with the Royal Welch about three weeks when the Nineteenth Brigade was moved down to the Béthune sector to fill a gap in the Second Division; the gap was made by taking out the brigade of Guards to go into the Guards Division which was then being formed. On the way down we marched past Lord Kitchener. Kitchener, we were told, commented to the brigadier on the soldier-like appearance of the leading battalion—which was ourselves—but said cynically: ‘Wait until they’ve been a week or two in the trenches; they will lose some of that high polish.’ He apparently mistook us for one of the new-army battalions. The first trenches we went into on our arrival were the Cuinchy brick-stacks. The company I was with was on the canal-bank frontage, a few hundred yards to the left of where I had been with the Welsh Regiment at the end of May. The Germans opposite wished to be sociable. They sent messages over to us in undetonated rifle-grenades. One of these messages was evidently addressed to the Irish battalion we had relieved: