When Colonel Laurie penned those words last spring, he little dreamt that within a few short months the officers and men of both the 83rd and 86th would be shedding their life's blood freely in France, and now he himself has made the supreme sacrifice, and with Captains Master, Reynolds, Davis, Kennedy, Stevens, Allgood, Whelan, Miles, Biscoe, Lieutenants Rea, Whitfield, Burges, and Tyndall, Second-Lieutenants Magenis, Davy, Gilmore, Swaine, and Eldred--many of them his old comrades--sleeps his last long sleep in a foreign grave. The son of a soldier (the late General Laurie), Colonel Laurie received his first commission in the Rifles in September, 1885, and joined the 2nd Battalion, then quartered at Halifax, the last station occupied by British infantry in Canada, and it is interesting to recall that he was the last officer to join the battalion with the rank of Lieutenant, as an Army Order issued some time later directed subalterns to begin service as Second-Lieutenants. Halifax, Colonel Laurie tells us in his history of the regiment, was a delightful station, and all were sorry to leave it, the men especially so, and over 300 of them gave in their names as married without leave. Lieutenant Laurie moved with the battalion to Gibraltar in November, 1886, and to Egypt in January, 1888. In 1889 Lieutenant Laurie went up the Nile with the battalion, which was detained at Assouan so long that it missed the fight at Toski. He afterwards served at Malta and in various home stations, and did not again see active service until 1901, when he was sent from England as a special service officer for mounted infantry work, and took command of No. 2 Mounted Infantry Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Rifles. In the action at Hartbeestefontein he had a narrow escape, riding some 300 yards in front of his company in a charge, with one corporal. They were surprised from a house at 25 yards range, and the corporal saved his life by shooting a man in the act of aiming at his officer. He distinguished himself in the action at Klerksdorp and in the pursuit of Niewhoudt's commando, and on February 26th, 1902, was ordered to Pretoria to take command of the 28th Battalion Mounted Infantry, handing over his company to Lieutenant Low, who was killed a fortnight later. Captain Laurie was highly commended by Colonel Rochfort for his services with the Rifles Mounted Infantry in these words:-- "During the whole of my time in South Africa I did not command better or more mobile troops than the two mounted infantry companies of the Royal Irish Rifles under Captain Laurie and Captain Baker."