together, but he could do nothing; his eyes filled with tears. The battalion police-sergeant, a fierce-looking man, had just finished knotting him up when I arrived. I told Tottie that I was sorry to see him in trouble. That drink, as it proved, did him good in the end. I had to find another servant. Old Joe, the quartermaster, knowing that Tottie was the only trained officer’s servant in the battalion, took him from me when his sentence expired; he even induced the colonel to remit a few days of it. Tottie was safer in billets with Old Joe than in trenches with me. Some time in the summer of the following year his seven years’ contract as a reservist expired. When their ‘buckshee seven’ expired, reservists were sent home for a few days and then ‘deemed to have re-enlisted under the Military Service Act,’ and recalled to the battalion. But Tottie made good use of his leave. His brother-in-law was director of a munitions factory and took Tottie in as a skilled metal-worker. He was made a starred man—his work was so important to industry that he could not be spared for military service, so Tottie is, I hope, still alive. Good luck to him and to Birmingham. Sergeant Dickens was a different case. He was a fighter, and one of the best N.C.O.’s in either battalion of the regiment. He had been awarded the d.c.m. and Bar, the Military Medal and the French Médaille Militaire. Two or three times already he had been promoted to sergeant’s rank and each time been reduced for drunkenness. He escaped field-punishment because it was considered sufficient for him to lose his stripes, and whenever there was a battle Dickens would distinguish himself so conspicuously as a leader that he would be given his stripes back again.