trenches he asked if there was anything we should like. Well, we wanted some cigarettes badly, and told him so, and he promptly took a box of about a hundred from his pocket, and handed them round. They went almost as fast as the Germans. I am now well enough to be back at the front, and I’m keen to get into the firing line again, and rush along in some more bayonet charges--for those are the swoops that roll the Germans up as much as anything we do. I have been a Coldstreamer for more than a dozen years, and have always been proud of it; but I never felt prouder than I do now, after reading what our great chief has said about us in despatches. We have sometimes been called feather-bed soldiers; but we’re known as “Coldsteelers” now, and try to live up to the reputation of our motto--“Second to none.” CHAPTER XXI AN ARMOURED CAR IN AMBUSH [Sir John French, in one of his despatches, expressed his great admiration of the splendid work which has been done at the front by our Territorials--that work, indeed, by this time has become almost equal to the glorious achievements of our Regular troops. The first of our Territorials to go into action during the war were the Northumberland Hussars, and this story is told by Trooper Stanley Dodds, of that fine corps, who was serving as a despatch-rider and on being wounded was invalided home. He afterwards returned to the front. Trooper Dodds is one of the best-known motor cyclists in the North, and winner in the competition of the summer of 1914 promoted by the North-Eastern Automobile Association. This was decided in North Yorkshire, over difficult country.] I fancy there are people in England who imagine that the life of a despatch-rider is one long unbroken joy ride. They seem to think that he gets somewhere near the front, and spends all his days careering over beautifully kept military roads between headquarters and the firing line, and seeing and enjoying everything that goes on; but I can assure such people that in practice despatch-riding does not work out like that at all. I am only a humble member of the fraternity, but I have had a fair share of despatch work, and I do know that I have not had a single joy ride since I took the business on, and I can vouch for the fact that beautifully kept roads do not exist anywhere near the front, at any rate in Flanders. Even some of the so-called roads have never been roads--they were simply tracks to start with, and when military traffic had been going over them for some time they had lost all resemblance to roads, and you could scarcely tell the difference between them and the ordinary countryside.