The 1st Administrative Battalion, Wilts, saw much bloodless service whilst attending these autumn manœuvres, and learnt how wars were won, but whether the future tense can be used is not for the writer to say, he only thinks not. The Battle of Codford was a terrible battle on paper, and doubtless, with the aid of good district maps, admirably contrived so that both sides should win, or that defeat was unlikely. Science and skill were to be the deciders of this great battle, not murder and panic. Trout streams of varying depths, from inches to feet, were to be considered rivers, with bridges here and there broken down by artillery or blown up, so as to delay progress. Walls and roadside buildings, loop-holed, demanded either delay, or a detour through fields or swamps to recover the high road, and artillery were so artfully posted as to be unknown and unseen until the hail of shot and shell swept away at least a brigade from among the many advancing, heedless of consequences. These contretemps have occurred in real warfare. There was a surprise at Moodkee, something worse at Ferozeshah; bayonets and bravery versus entrenchments and mistakes at Subraon; and a defeat at Chillianwallah, all in India; but these happened in days when skill was not so much considered, and when weapons of destruction and arms of accuracy were quite in their infancy. The Crimea had taught us something; the Mutinies, China and Cape wars, more; and the result of the short, but cruel war, between France and Germany, too recent for its lessons to be forgotten. Besides all this, what were these autumn manœuvres got up for, but to teach troops how to fight skilfully, and their commanders to practically acquire a knowledge of strategy and tactics? The valley dividing the great ridge, or Grovely Wood, and through which valley somewhat lazily meandered the Wiley Brook, was the scene where much of the conflict occurred. Farm houses, cottage gardens, and water-meadows, half concealed in alder bushes, and low jungle, well aiding the attack of the bold northern army on the position behind Grovely Wood, and the great ridge taken up by the southerners. In vain did the enemy's artillery vomit forth smoke and imaginary shot and shell from copse and half-hidden points of advantage. The southerners were not to be scared, but commencing the offensive, poured down upon the devoted enemy through the paths of the Great Ridge Wood, and covered by a cloud of skirmishers, drove the enemy from the valley, dividing the positions of the two forces. Artillery answers artillery, and cavalry, careless of consequences, chase skirmishers over the meadows. Now the strategy, or _previous_ arrangements of the south begin to tell, and gradually the attackers withdraw to their stronghold across the great river Wiley, there in their turn to be attacked.