General Birdwood, commanding the Australian Corps, and afterward the Fifth Army in succession to General Gough, was always known as “Birdie” by high and low, and this dapper man, so neat, so bright, so brisk, had a human touch with him which won him the affection of all his troops. Gen. Hunter Weston, of the 8th Corps, was another man of character in high command. He spoke of himself in the House of Commons one day as “a plain, blunt soldier,” and the army roared with laughter from end to end. There was nothing plain or blunt about him. He was a man of airy imagination and a wide range of knowledge, and theories on life and war which he put forward with dramatic eloquence. It was of Gen. Hunter Weston that the story was told about the drunken soldier put onto a stretcher and covered with a blanket, to get him out of the way when the army commander made a visit to the lines. “What's this?” said the general. “Casualty, sir,” said the quaking platoon commander. “Not bad, I hope?” “Dead, sir,” said the subaltern. He meant dead drunk. The general drew himself up, and said, in his dramatic way, “The army commander salutes the honored dead!” And the drunken private put his head from under the blanket and asked, “What's the old geezer a-sayin' of?” That story may have been invented in a battalion mess, but it went through the army affixed to the name of Hunter Weston, and seemed to fit him. The 8th Corps was on the left in the first attack on the Somme, when many of our divisions were cut to pieces in the attempt to break the German line at Gommecourt. It was a ghastly tragedy, which spoiled the success on the right at Fricourt and Montauban. But Gen. Hunter Weston was not degomme, as the French would say, and continued to air his theories on life and warfare until the day of Victory, when once again we had “muddled through,” not by great generalship, but by the courage of common men. Among the divisional generals with whom I came in contact--I met most of them at one time or another--were General Hull of the 56th (London) Division, General Hickey of the 16th (Irish) Division, General Harper of the 51st (Highland) Division, General Nugent of the 36th (Ulster) Division, and General Pinnie of the 35th (Bantams) Division, afterward of the 33d.