The most unusual charge was against the regimental goat-major (a corporal); it was first framed as _Lese majesty_, but this was later reduced to ‘disrespect to an officer: in that he, at Wrexham—on such and such a date—did prostitute the Royal Goat, being the gift of His Majesty the Colonel-in-Chief from His royal herd at Windsor, by offering his stud-services to ——, Esq., farmer and goat breeder, of Wrexham.’ The goat-major pleaded that he had done this out of kindness to the goat, to which he was much attached. He was reduced to the ranks and the charge of the goat given to another. The regular battalions of the regiment, though officered mainly by Anglo-Welshmen of county families, did not normally contain more than about one Welshman in fifty in the ranks. They were mainly recruited in Birmingham. The only man at Harlech besides myself who had joined the regiment at the start was a poor boy, a golf-caddie, who had got into trouble a short time before for shoplifting. The chapels held soldiering to be sinful, and in Merioneth the chapels were supreme. Prayers were offered for me in the chapels, not because of the dangers I ran in the war, but because I was in the army. Later, Lloyd George persuaded the chapels that the war was a crusade. So there was a sudden tremendous influx of Welshmen from North Wales. They were difficult soldiers; they particularly resented having to stand still while the N.C.O.’s swore at them. A deputation of North Welshmen came to me once and said: ‘Captain Graves, sir, we do not like our sergeant-major; he do curse and he do swear, and he do drink, and he is a maan of lowly origin, too.’ At Wrexham we learned regimental history, drill, musketry, Boer War field-tactics, military law and organization, how to recognize bugle calls, how to work a machine-gun, and how to conduct ourselves as officers on formal occasions. We dug no trenches, handled no bombs and came to think of the company, not of the platoon, still less of the section, as the smallest independent tactical unit. There were only two wounded officers back from the front at the time; both had left the Second Battalion on the retreat from Mons. Neither would talk much of his experiences. All that one of them, Emu Jones, would tell us was: ‘The first queer sight I saw in France was three naked women hanging by their feet in a butcher’s shop.’ The other would say: ‘The shells knock hell out of a man, especially the big black ones. Just hell. And that fellow Emu; he wasn’t any good. We marched and marched and he had a weak heart and used to faint and expect his poor, bloody platoon to carry him as well as the rest of their load. We used to swear he was shamming. Don’t believe what old Emu tells you of the retreat.’ XI