I have one or two random memories of this training period at Wrexham. The landlord of my billet was a Welsh solicitor, who greatly overcharged us while pretending amicability. He wore a wig—or, to be more exact, he had three wigs, with hair of progressive lengths. When he had worn the medium-sized hair for a few days he would put on the wig with long hair, and say that, dear him, it was time to get a hair-cut. Then he would go out of the house and in a public lavatory perhaps or a wayside copse would change into the short-haired wig, which he wore until it was time to change to the medium one again. This deception was only discovered when one of the officers billeted with me got drunk and raided his bedroom. This officer, whose name was Williams, was an extreme example of the sly border Welshman. The drunker he got the more shocking his confessions. He told me one day about a girl he had got engaged to in Dublin, and even slept with on the strength of a diamond engagement ring. ‘Only paste really,’ he said. The day before the wedding she had had a foot cut off by a Dalkey tram, and he had hurriedly left the city. ‘But, Graves, she was a lovely, lovely girl before that happened.’ He had been a medical student at Trinity College, Dublin. Whenever he went to Chester, the nearest town, to pick up a prostitute, he not only used to appeal to her patriotism to charge him nothing, but he always gave her my name. I knew of this because these women used to write to me. One day I said to him in mess: ‘In future you are going to be distinguished from all the other Williams’ in the regiment by being called Dirty Williams.’ The name stuck. By one shift or another he escaped all trench-service except for a short spell in a quiet sector, and lasted the war out safely. Private Robinson. He was from Anglesey, and had joined the Special Reserve before the war for his health. In September the entire battalion volunteered for service overseas except Robinson. He said he would not go, and that he could be neither coaxed nor bullied. Finally he was brought before the colonel, who was genuinely puzzled at his obstinacy. Robinson explained that he was not afraid. ‘I have a wife and pigs at home.’ The battalion was, in September, rigged out in a temporary navy-blue uniform until khaki might be available. All but Robinson. They decided to shame him. So he continued, by order, to wear the peace-time scarlet tunic and blue trousers with a red stripe; a very dirty scarlet tunic (they had put him on the kitchen staff). His mates called him Cock Robin and sang a popular chorus at him: And I never get a knock When the boys call Cock Cockity ock, cock, Cock Robin! In my old red vest I mean to cut a shine.... But Robinson did not care: For the more they call me Robin Redbreast I’ll wear it longer still. I will wear a red waistcoat, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will![1]