We had heard little about the Welsh Regiment except that it was tough but rough, and that the Second Battalion, to which we were now attached, had a peculiar regimental history as the old Sixty-ninth Foot. It had originally been formed as an emergency force from pensioners and boy-recruits and sent overseas to do the work of a regular battalion—I forget in which eighteenth-century campaign. At one time it had served as marines. The Ups and Downs was the battalion’s army nick-name, partly because 69 is a number which makes the same sense whichever way up it is written. The 69 was certainly upside-down when we joined it. All the company officers except two boys recently from Sandhurst and a Special Reserve captain were attached from other regiments. There were now six Royal Welch Fusiliers, two South Wales Borderers, two East Surreys, two Wiltshires, one from the Border Regiment, one from the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. Even the quartermaster was an alien from the Connaught Rangers. There were perhaps four time-serving N.C.O.’s left in the battalion. Of the men, not more than fifty or so had been given more than a couple of months’ training before being sent out; some had only three weeks’ training; a great many had never fired a musketry course. This was because the First Division had been in constant hard fighting since the previous August; the Second Welsh had in eight months lost its full fighting strength five times over. The last occasion was the Richebourg fighting of 9th May, one of the worst disasters of the early part of the war; the division’s epitaph in the official _communiqué_ read: ‘Meeting with considerable opposition in the direction of the Rue du Bois, our attacks were not pressed.’