Promising to come back as soon as possible before I left for France I said good-bye and commenced my return journey, feeling very homesick and miserable. But I found a very interesting companion on the way back, one of the gallant boys of French's "Contemptibles." He was one of the few survivors of a battalion of Gloucesters and was one of the twenty-four who held back about seventy times their number and covered the retreat of the remnant of their regiment. When history is written and the deeds of the different regiments recorded, the wonderful stand of the twenty-four will go down as an epoch of the Great Retirement. Reticent as most British soldiers are, yet being a comrade, he told me enough to give me some idea of what we were going into. Parting from him at Bristol, by a strange coincidence I ran into a corporal of the Second Battalion of Gloucesters. This man had just completed his service with the army and had been about a month on reserve when again called out. He now lies somewhere in France, for within three weeks from this time his regiment was almost wiped out. While sitting in the train I happened to put my head too far out of the car window and away went my cap. The corporal helped me out. He dug from his kit a cap of a wonderful checked pattern, big black and white squares, and gave it to me. It was staggering in its color scheme, but better than nothing. Next morning, judge of my consternation when I found it impossible to get a cap from the quartermaster in time to go on parade, and I was obliged, to go in my beautiful new headpiece. It seemed to shout its color scheme from end to end of the battalion. Particularly did Morgan make caustic comment on the queer ideas of some people as to the proper head-dress for a soldier, and everyone, from the corporal up wanted to know what in hell I meant by coming on parade with that awful thing on my head. Finally the Colonel came and ran his eye over his pets. "Tshun," he roared, and everyone "tshuned." A moment of silence while the Old Man critically lamped his battalion; then it broke. "Who is that man who thinks he may come on parade in his own ideas of fashion? Fall out, that man, I want to speak to him." I sneaked guiltily up to him, mentally noting those of my pals who snickered loudest, and stood dutifully at attention. After informing me that in spite of my looks I was supposed to be a soldier, and that although it was the dearest wish of his heart to permit me to disgrace the battalion, yet he felt compelled to administer a little correction. "How came you to be wearing that monstrous thing?" I explained truthfully, but he insisted that I had been imbibing and had lost my cap as a consequence. That afternoon, when tottering under the weight of sides of beef and other heavy things, which I was obliged to carry, I resolved that if I ever again lost my cap, I would not be guilty of wearing an alibi. CHAPTER VIII LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CAMP