I rejoined the Third Battalion at Litherland, near Liverpool, where it had been shifted from Wrexham as part of the Mersey defence force; I liked the Third Battalion. The senior officers were generous in not putting more work on me than I wished to undertake, and it was good to meet again three of my Wrexham contemporaries who had been severely wounded (all of them, by a coincidence, in the left thigh) and seemed to be out of it for the rest of the war—Frank Jones-Bateman and ‘Father’ Watkin, who had been in the Welsh Regiment with me, and Aubrey Attwater, the assistant adjutant, who had gone to the Second Battalion early in 1915 and had been hit when out on patrol. Attwater had come from Cambridge, at the outbreak of war and was known as ‘Brains’ in the battalion. The militia majors, who were for the most part country gentlemen with estates in Wales, and had no thoughts in peace-time beyond hunting, shooting, fishing, and the control of their tenantry, were delighted with Attwater’s informative talk over the port at mess. Sergeant Malley, the mess-sergeant, would go round with his ‘Light or vintage, sir?’ and the old majors would say to Attwater: ‘Now, Brains! Tell us about Shakespeare. Is it true that Bacon wrote him?’ Or, ‘Well, Brains! What do you think about this chap Hilaire Belloc? Does he really know when the war’s going to end?’ And Attwater would humorously accept his position as combined encyclopaedia and almanac. Sergeant Malley was another friend whom I was always pleased to meet again. He could pour more wine into a glass than any other man in the world; it bulged up over the top of a glass like a cap and he was never known to spill a drop.