As soon as we arrived at the depot we Special Reserve officers were reminded of our great good fortune. We were to have the privilege of serving with one or the other of the line battalions. In peace-time a candidate for a commission in the regiment had not only to distinguish himself in the passing-out examination at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and be strongly recommended by two officers of the regiment, but he had to have a guaranteed independent income that enabled him to play polo and hunt and keep up the social reputation of the regiment. These requirements were not insisted on; but we were to understand that we did not belong to the ‘regiment’ in the special sense. To be allowed to serve with it in time of war should satisfy our ambitions. We were not temporary officers, like those of the new army, but held permanent commissions in the Special Reserve battalion. We were reminded that the Royal Welch considered themselves second to none, even to the Guards. Representations had been made to the regiment after the South African War, inquiring whether it was willing to become the Welsh Guards, and it had indignantly refused; such a change would have made the regiment junior, in the Brigade of Guards, even to the Irish Guards only so recently formed. We were warned that while serving with a line battalion we were none of us to expect to be recommended for orders or decorations. An ordinary campaigning medal inscribed with a record of service with the battalion should be sufficient reward. Decorations were not regarded in the regiment as personal awards, but as representative awards for the whole battalion. They would therefore be reserved for the professional soldiers, to whom they would be more useful than to us as helps to extra-regimental promotion. And this was what happened. There must have been something like two or three hundred Special Reserve officers serving overseas. But except for three or four who were not directly recommended by the battalion commander, but distinguished themselves while attached to brigade or divisional staffs, or those who happened to be sent to new-army battalions or other regiments, we remained undecorated. I can only recall three exceptions. The normal proportion of awards, considering the casualties we suffered, which was about sixty or seventy killed, should have been at least ten times that amount. I myself never performed any feat for which I might conceivably have been decorated throughout my service in France.