“I had four men with me on rear-guard,” he said, “and we were holding the end of a village street to let our chaps get away as far as possible before we mounted and caught up with them. We could see German infantry coming on, masses of them, but they couldn’t tell whether the village street held five men or a couple of squadrons, so they held back a bit. At last I could see we were in danger of being outflanked, so I got my men to get mounted, and just as they were doing so a German officer put his head round the corner of the house at the end of the street--not ten yards away from me. I raised my rifle, shut both eyes, and pulled the trigger--it was point-blank range, and when I opened my eyes and looked it seemed as if I’d blown half his face away. I felt scared at what I had done--it seemed wrong to have shot a man like that, though he and his kind drive women and children in front of their firing lines. It seemed to make such a horrible mess, somehow. I got mounted, and just as I swung my leg over the horse, a fool of a German infantryman aimed a blow at me with the butt end of his rifle--I don’t know where he sprung from--and damaged my arm like this. If he’d had the sense he could have run me through with a bayonet or shot me, but I suppose he was too flurried. But that officer’s face after I’d shot him stuck to me, and I still dream of it, and shall for some time, probably.” He who told this story is a boy of twenty-two or three, and he has gone back to the front to rejoin his regiment, now--with three stripes on his arm, instead of the two that were his at the beginning of the campaign. On forced marches, and often on normal marches as well, all the things that one considers necessities--with the exception of sufficient food to keep one in condition--go by the board. One sleeps under the stars, with no other covering than a coat and blanket; one lies out to sleep in pouring rain, with no more covering; tents are out of the question, for there is no time to pitch and strike them. One goes for days without a wash, and for days, too, without undressing. There were two scamps in the South African campaign who promised each other, for some mysterious reason, that they would not take their boots off for a month, and they ran into such a series of marches and actions that, even if they had not made the compact, they would only have been able to remove their boots three times in the course of that month. The smart soldier of peace service goes unshaven, unwashed, careless of all except getting enough of food and sleep at times; and when a lull comes in the operations, so that he gets a day or even an hour or two to himself, a bath is a luxury undreamed of by the man who can have one every morning and consider it a mere usual thing.