So again I begged his pardon and explained what the peasants had told him. He looked at me for a moment oddly. I admit that it wasn’t usual for a private to address his officer on parade without being first spoken to. But this was war, the world war, and the old order changeth. Anyhow I was told to ride in front of the troop as guide and did and brought the troop to the rendezvous about twenty minutes late. The Major was not pleased. Later in the day the subaltern came around the stables and, seeing me, stopped and said, “Oh--er--you!” I came to attention behind the horse. “What’s your name?” said he. I told him. “Do you talk French?” “Yes, sir.” “Where were you educated?” “France and Oxford University, sir.” “Oh!” slightly surprised. “Er--all right, get on with your work”--and whether it was he or the sergeant I don’t know, but I had four horses to groom that morning instead of two. From that moment I decided to cut out being intelligent and remain what the French call a “simple” soldier. By a strange coincidence there was a nephew of that subaltern in the Brigade of Gunners to which I was posted when I received a commission. It is curious how accurately nephews sum up uncles. 17 When we did not go out on drill orders like that we began the day with what is called rough exercise. It was. In the foggy dawn, swathed in scarfs and Balaklava helmets, one folded one’s blanket on the horse, bitted him, mounted, took another horse on either side, and in a long column followed an invisible lance-corporal across ploughed fields, over ditches, and along roads at a good stiff trot that jarred one’s spine. It was generally raining and always so cold that one never had the use of either hands or feet. The result was that if one of the unbitted led horses became frolicsome it was even money that he would pull the rope out of one’s hands and canter off blithely down the road,--for which one was cursed bitterly by the sergeant on one’s return. The rest of the day was divided between stables and fatigues in that eternal heart-breaking mud. One laid brick paths and brushwood paths and within twenty-four hours they had disappeared under mud. It was shovelled away in sacks and wheelbarrows, and it oozed up again as if by magic. One made herring-bone drains and they merged in the mud. There seemed to be no method of competing with it. In the stables the horses stood in it knee-deep. As soon as one had finished grooming, the brute seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in lying down in it. It became a nightmare. The sergeant didn’t go out of his way to make things easier for any of us and confided most of the dirtier, muddier jobs to me. There seemed to be always something unpleasant that required “intelligence,” so he said, and in the words of the army I “clicked.” The result was that I was happiest when I was on guard, a twenty-four-hour duty which kept me more or less out of the mud and entirely out of his way.