This company, "E," proved the friendly butt of all the others, one wag even going so far as to christen it the "Essex Beagles," alleging they did not "parade," but "met"! So, in order to free the others for harder training this company provided very nearly all the fatigue parties for the camp. Still, this didn't matter. It just gave the budding officers a chance to show what they were capable of. On several occasions a member of "E" Company proved he was more than a little useful with his hands when it came to a matter of treating things from a physical point of view and cutting the cheap wit out. The fatigues were also done without a murmur, that was another point of honour, and although the available strength of the company was dwindling day by day, "grousing" about extra work was conspicuous by its absence. There was a funny side about this dwindling of the strength, too. Men would be on the morning parade, and not on that later in the day. The explanation was a simple one. Their papers had come through. A man would walk out through the gates and be pulled up by the sentry. "What about your pass?" the latter would ask. "Got my discharge," would be the reply. "Got a commission?" "Yes." "Good luck, old chap. I'm getting my papers to-morrow." So, many of the original members of the First Sportsman's Battalion were scattered about on every front in their various regiments. Walking through the Rue Colmar, Suez, one day I met my old company officer, then in the Royal Flying Corps. At Sidi Bishr, on the banks of the Mediterranean, I met another. A fellow-sergeant in the Battalion came up in the Rue Rosetta, Alexandria, and claimed me. Out beyond the Bitter Lakes, east of the Suez Canal, I met an old Sportsman who had been a fellow-corporal with me. Back of the Somme, a prominent West Country Sportsman shouted a greeting to me from the Artillery. He still remembered rousing the camp at Hornchurch one night by sounding a hunting horn. In an Artillery Captain in the Hebuterne sector I recognized another member--a Machine-Gun officer rolled up smilingly on the way up the line, and, finest time of all, I had nearly a whole day with what was left of the old crowd when they were resting after Delville Wood. Friendships made in the First Sportsman's Battalion were not easily broken. We are out of it now, but--once a Sportsman, always a Sportsman. That, at least, has been my experience. And it must not be forgotten that to Mrs. Cunliffe-Owen is due the credit of conceiving the idea of a battalion formed of men over the then enlistment age, who, by reason of their life as sportsmen, were fit and hard. Approaching the War Office, she obtained permission to raise a special battalion of men up to the age of forty-five. This was how the Sportsman's Battalion was actually brought into being.