Bilfred was like them all in many ways. But, in spite of everything, he never lost his personality. He invariably kicked three times when he was first mounted—and never afterwards on that particular day; he hated motors moving or stationary; and he was an adept at slipping his head collar and getting loose. It was never safe to let go his head for an instant. With ears forward and tail straight up on end, he was off in a flash at a trot that was vulgarly fast. He never galloped till his angry pursuers were close, and then he could dodge like a Rugby three-quarter. If he got away in barracks he always made straight for the tennis-lawns, where his soup-plate feet wrought untold havoc. And no longer was he to be lured to capture with an empty feed tin. Everybody knew him, most people cursed him at times, but for all that everybody loved him. II. I think that when a new history of the Regiment comes to be written honourable mention should be made therein of a certain team of dark bays that pulled the same gun of the same battery for so many years. They served in England and in Ireland, in France and in the Low Countries; they thundered over the grassy flats of Salisbury Plain; they toiled up the steep rocky roads of Glen Imaal; they floundered in the bogs of Okehampton. They stood exposed in all weathers; they stifled in close evil-smelling billets, in trains, and on board ship. They were present at Mons; they were all through the Great Retreat; they swept forward to the Marne and on to the Aisne; they marched round to Flanders in time for the first battle of Ypres. They were never sick nor sorry, even when fodder was short and the marches long, even when there was no time to slake their raging thirsts. They pulled together in patience and in dumb, pathetic trust of their lords and masters, knowing nothing, understanding nothing, until at last Fate overtook them. At the beginning of August 1914 the battery had just returned to its station after a month’s hard work at practice camp. Bilfred, a veteran now of more than seven years’ service, had probably never been in better condition in his life. Ordinarily he would have been given an easy time for some weeks, with plenty of food and just enough exercise and collar work to keep him fit for the strain of the big manœuvres in September.