While we were outside Albert we got our first leave allotment and the ranks were permitted to return to their wives and families for fourteen days, provided always that they had been duly vaccinated, inoculated, and declared free from vermin and venereal disease by the medical officer. A delightful game, the inoculation business. Army orders are careful not to make it compulsory, but if any man refuses to be done his commanding officer is expected to argue with him politely, and, if that fails, to hound him to the needle. If he shies at the needle’s point then his leave is stopped,--although he has sweated blood for King and country for eighteen months or so, on a weekly pay with which a munitioneer daily tips the waiter at the “Carlton.” If he has been unlucky enough to get venereal disease then his leave is stopped for a year. In the next war every Tommy will be a munition maker. 31 The desire to get out of it, to hide, refused to leave me. I wrote to my brother and asked him if he could help me to become an R.T.O. or an M.L.O.; failing that, a cushy liaison job miles away from shambles and responsibility and spit and polish. He knew of the very thing, and I was duly nominated for liaison. The weeks went by and the nomination papers became a mass of illegible recommendations and signatures up to the highest Generals of the English Army and a Maréchal of France. But the ultimate reply was that I was a Battery Commander and therefore far too important to be allowed to go. Considering that I was half dead and not even allowed an opinion in the choosing of a position for my own battery, Gilbert and Sullivan could have conceived no more priceless paradox. Somewhere about the end of May we were relieved and went to a rest camp outside Abbeville which was being bombed every night. A special week’s leave to England was granted to “war-weary officers.” I sent a subaltern and, prepared to pawn my own soul to see England again, asked if I might go too. The reply is worthy of quotation. “You don’t seem to understand that this is a rest camp, the time when you are supposed to train your battery. You’ll get your leave in the line.” The camp was on turf at the edge of a deep lake. All day the horses roamed free grazing, and the men splashed about in the water whenever they felt inclined. The sun shone and footballs appeared from nowhere and there were shops in the village where they could spend money, and Abbeville was only about a mile and a half away. In the morning we did a little gun drill and cleaned vehicles and harness. Concerts took place in the evenings. Leslie Henson came with a theatrical company and gave an excellent show. The battery enjoyed its time of training.