scores of difficult critical decisions. As we stepped out from among the blanketed forms I thought bitterly of the 'glory' of war. Yet if there was any glory in war this was it. It was here, in this patient suffering and obedience. These men might well glory in their infirmities. This was heroism, the real thing, the spirit rising to incredible heights of patient endurance in the foreseen possible result of positive action for an ideal. The reaction from battle is overwhelming. Passions that the civilised man simply does not know, so colourless is his experience of them in ordinary days, are let loose, anger and terror and horror and lust to kill. So for a while, as nearly always happens, even wounds lost their power to pain in the sleep of bottomless exhaustion. Those who could not sleep were drugged with morphine. The moaning never stopped, but rose and fell and rose again. It shook my heart. We turned from the ashen faces and went out into the grey morning light. Everything seemed very grey. A mist was drawing up slowly from the sluggish Lys, and we wondered as we went shivering through it across the soaked grass what was happening beyond it over there at Loos. Next afternoon at tea we were all cheered by the news that a man who had had his leg taken off three hours before was asking for a penny whistle. At last it was discovered that one of the cooks had one. (Cooks in the army are a race apart, possessors of all kinds of strange accomplishments.) It was willingly handed over, and soon the strains of 'Annie Laurie' were rising softly from a cot in Ward VIII. A month later the Principal Chaplain asked me to go to a battalion. Chaplains who had been through the previous winter with battalions were not anxious for another winter of it, if fresh men could be found. I was thankful to go, in spite of all the kindness there had been on every hand and the friendships made. The devilish ingenuity of wounds was getting the better of me. My charge was a brigade, containing a battalion of the Gordon Highlanders, with which I was directed to mess. But the day I joined, this battalion was taken out of the brigade, and as soon as the rearrangement was completed I was transferred to one of the battalions of The Royal Scots. While I was with this unit both its commanding officer and its adjutant were changed. In both cases the cause was the promotion of the officer in question. DUMBARTON'S DRUMS _The Regimental Ribbon of The Royal Scots is shown on the wrapper of this book_ CHAPTER V DUMBARTON'S DRUMS I _Back Again!_