General Ivor Maxse, commanding the Sixteenth Corps (none but corps generals can say certain things in public), lectured on some of the teachings of the Battle of Arras. He gave instances of what comes of divorcing the soldier from his rifle. On one occasion, said he, men were met sidling down a road with the simple statement that the Germans were advancing to counter-attack them, and that they were retiring “because their own supply of bombs had run out.” Patrols sent up to verify, found the counter-attack was being made by four Huns furiously trying to surrender to some one. Again, a company was heavily fired on from a wood about two hundred yards off. Not a man returned the fire. They simply shouted down the trench, “Pass the word for the snipers.” All of which proves what every company commander knows, that the human mind under stress of excitement holds but one idea at a time, or, as the drill books of forty years ago laid down, “men will instinctively act in war as they have been trained to act in peace.” In spite of the growing crops and intense agriculture, the Battalion found rifle ranges and did “a great deal of much-needed musketry.” They wound up their stay at Méricourt in great glory at the Brigade sports, sweeping off everything in sight—flat races, steeple-chase, tug-of-war, and the rest, and winning their brigadier’s trophy to the corps with the greatest number of firsts by a clear “possible” against the whole Guards Division. (“’Tis this way. A good battalion will do what is wanted; but a happy battalion, mark you, takes on from that. Did we work at the Sports? Remember, we was all in the pink, trained on that dam’ railway an’ fatted up for Boesinghe. What chance had the rest of the Division against us at all?”) THIRD YPRES AND BOESINGHE They entrained on the 30th May as part of the vast concentration that was crystallising itself for the Third Battle of Ypres, and, after twelve hours, breakfasted at Arques, near St. Omer, and marched all day to their crowded billets, which, like the rest of the landscape, were loaded up with crops and difficult to train in. They knew nothing of what was expected of them till 11th June, when C.O.’s were told at Brigade Headquarters that they were to practise assaults from trench to trench instead of “open warfare.” A battle, including earthquakes, had taken place at Messines which had unkeyed the situation to a certain extent, and the Guards Division would be needed to develop it.