The afternoon parades were marching drill, physical exercises, harness cleaning, afternoon stables and finish for the day about five o’clock, unless one were wanted for guard or picquet. Picquet meant the care of the horses at night, an unenviable job. But guard was a twenty-four hours’ duty, two hours on, four hours off, much coveted after a rough passage in the riding school. It gave one a chance to heal. Hitherto everything had been a confused mass of men without individuality but of unflagging cheerfulness. Now in the team work of the squadron and the barrack room individuality began to play its part and under the hard and fast routine the cheerfulness began to yield to grousing. The room corporal of my room was a re-enlisted man, a schoolmaster from Scotland, conscientious, liked by the men, extremely simple. I’ve often wondered whether he obtained a commission. The other troopers were ex-stable boys, labourers, one a golf caddy and one an ex-sailor who was always singing an interminable song about a highly immoral donkey. The caddy and the sailor slept on either side of me. They were a mixed crowd and used filthy language as naturally as they breathed, but as cheery and stout a lot as you’d wish to meet. Under their grey shirts beat hearts as kindly as many a woman’s. I remember the first time I was inoculated and felt like nothing on earth. “Christ!” said the sailor. “Has that perishin’ doctor been stickin’ his perishin’ needle into you, Mr. Gibbs?”--For some reason they always called me Mr. Gibbs.--“Come over here and get straight to bed before the perishin’ stuff starts workin’. I’ve ’ad some of it in the perishin’ navy.” And he and the caddy took off my boots and clothes and put me to bed with gentle hands. The evening’s noisiness was given up. Everybody spoke in undertones so that I might get to sleep. And in the morning, instead of sweeping under my own bed as usual, they did it for me and cleaned my buttons and boots because my arm was still sore. Can you imagine men like that nailing a kitten by its paws to a door as a booby-trap to blow a building sky high, as those Boches have done? Instead of bayoneting prisoners the sailor looked at them and said, “Ah, you poor perishin’ tikes!” and threw them his last cigarettes. They taught me a lot, those men. Their extraordinary acceptation of unpleasant conditions, their quickness to resent injustice and speak of it at once, their continual cheeriness, always ready to sing, gave me something to compete with. On wet days of misery when I’d had no letters from home there were moments when I damned the war and thought with infinite regret of New York. But if these fellows could stick it, well, I’d had more advantages than they’d had and, by Jove, I was going to stick it too. It was a matter of personal pride.