In due course his successor came and we moved to Yailajik--well called by the men, Yellow-Jack--and the hot weather was occupied with training schemes at dawn, officers’ rides and drills, examinations A and B (unofficial, of course), horse shows and an eternity of unnecessary work, while one gasped in shirt sleeves and stupid felt hats after the Anzac pattern; long, long weeks of appalling heat and petty worries, until it became a toss-up between suicide or murder. The whole spirit of the brigade changed. From having been a happy family working together like a perfect team, the spirit of discontent spread like a canker. The men looked sullen and did their work grudgingly, going gladly to hospital at the first signs of dysentery. Subalterns put in applications for the Flying Corps,--I was one of their number,--and ceased to take an interest in their sections. Battery Commanders raised sarcasm to a fine art, and cursed the day that ever sent them to this ghastly back-water. I left the headquarters and sought relief in “C” battery, where, encouraged by the sympathetic commanding officer, I got nearer to the solution of the mysterious triangle T.O.B. than I’d ever been before. He had a way of talking about it that the least intelligent couldn’t fail to grasp. At last I fell ill and with an extraordinary gladness went down to the 5th Canadian hospital, on the eastern outskirts of Salonica, on the seashore. The trouble was an ear. Even the intensest pain, dulled by frequent injections of morphia, did not affect my relief in getting away from that brigade, where, up to the departure of the Colonel, I had spent such a happy time. The pity of it was that everybody envied me. They talked of an operation. Nothing would have induced me to let them operate in that country where the least scratch turned septic. After several weeks I was sent to Malta, where I was treated for twenty-one days. At the end of that time the specialist asked me if my career would be interfered with if he sent me home for consultation as to an operation. One reason he could not do it was that it was a long business, six weeks in bed, at least, and they were already overfull. The prison door was about to open! I assured him that on the contrary my career would benefit largely by a sight of home, and to my eternal joy he then and there, in rubber gloves, wrote a recommendation to send me to England. His name stands out in my memory in golden letters. Within twenty-four hours I was on board. The fact that all my kit was still with the battery was a matter of complete indifference. I would have left a thousand kits. At home all the leaves were turning, blue smoke was filtering out of red chimneys against the copper background of the beech woods--and they would be waiting for me in the drive. PART III _THE WESTERN FRONT_ 1