Their first job was burying the dead and clearing up the battlefields of the weeks before. Parties went out to gather up the stiffened corpses of all nations. In places, too, they found human bodies torn, shattered, and disfigured. It was a gruesome job, still the apprenticeship was sound. The more irresponsible at once realised the seriousness of the game; the older men perceived that this was different to the wars they had seen before. The dead occasionally found in heaps showed the cruel power of the modern shell; the great craters made in the ground also illustrated the disastrous impact of those huge missiles from the German guns. Blood-stained accoutrements, broken guns and rifles, dead and wounded horses, trenches which had become cemeteries, dug-outs transformed into catacombs, revealed what they were up against. It was the science of fifty years exploited by the most cruel, clever, and cunning disciples of Mars. And all the while there passed through their ranks the motor transport with loads of wounded and dying men. Prisoners, too, came in batches. Great strong men they were, some stricken with hunger and cruel hardships, others dumb with the sense of humiliation and despair. Over their heads the regiment frequently noted the airships of their own army and the enemy. A bomb occasionally fell in their ranks, forming a useful introduction to the game beyond. It taught them how to run, how to take cover, and how to hit the petrol-tank of such impudent offenders. They also acquired at first hand a knowledge of our Allied arms. Little Belgians, they realised, were poor at the pomp and flashwork of war, but sound at the game of killing and holding men. The French, they saw, had all the _élan_ of their fathers, but less of their stomach and nerve. They needed victories to inspire them, and the sight of the khaki troops to remind them that war is only for the patient and the strong. These early days created a sense of comradeship with their Allies. The ever-generous heart of the French and Belgians inspired a mutual feeling of love and respect. This, they all felt, would hold them in the days to come.