When both parties were duly exercised, I gave a short lecture on the measures to be adopted against the use of _Flammenwerfer_, which is the “Liquid Fire” of the official _communiqués_. I had just been to a demonstration of this atrocity in the form of a captured German apparatus, and my chief object in lecturing the men about it was to make it quite clear that the flaming jets of burning gas cannot sink into a trench, but, as a matter of fact, only keep level so long as they are propelled by the driving power of the hose apparatus; as water from a hose goes straight, and then curves down to the ground, so gas, even though it be incandescent, goes straight and then rises. In the trench you are unscathed, as we proved in the demonstration, when they sprayed the flaming gas over a trench full of men. Indeed, the chief effect of this _flammenwerfer_ is one of frightfulness, as the Germans cannot come over until the flames have ceased. The men were rather inclined to gape at all this, but I found the words had sunk in when I asked what should be done if the enemy used this diabolical stuff against us. “Get down at the bottom of the trench, sir, and as soon as they stop it, give the ----’s ’ell!” The rest of the morning we spent “on the range,” which meant firing into a steep chalk bank at a hundred yards. Targets and paste-pot had been procured from the pioneers’ shop, and after posting a couple of “look-out” men on either side, we started range practice. The men are always keen about firing on the range, and it is really the most interesting and pleasant part of the infantryman’s training. I watched these fellows, hugging their rifle-butt into their shoulder, and feeling the smooth wood against their cheeks; they wriggled their bodies about to get a comfortable position; sometimes they flinched as they fired and jerked the rifle; sometimes they pressed the trigger as softly, as softly.... And gradually, carefully, we tried to detect and eliminate the faults. Then we ended up with fifteen rounds rapid in a minute. The “mad minute” it used to be called at home. After which we fell the men in, and Paul marched them back to the company “alarm post” outside the company office, where “B” Company always fell in; while Owen, Nicolson, and I walked back together. II. AFTERNOON “I still maintain,” said I, an hour later, as we finished lunch, “that bully-beef, some sort of sauce or pickle, and salad, followed by cheese, and ending with a cup of tea, is the proper lunch for an officer. I don’t mind other officers having tinned fruit, though, if they like it,” I added with a laugh. Owen and Syme were newly joined officers for whom the sight of tinned pears or apricots had not yet lost a certain glamour that disappeared after months and months. They were just finishing the pear course. Hence my last remark. “I bet if we allowed you to have bully every day,” came from Edwards, our Mess president, “you’d soon get sick of it.”