H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught was to inspect the Division on the 1st of November, which meant rehearsals for the ceremonial—a ritual of value for retaining a hold on “specialists,” and taken advantage of by company officers and N.C.O.’s who held that it did men no harm to disport themselves occasionally in slow time with a properly pointed foot. The rain and break-up of autumn made training very difficult, but, the Diary notes, though many denied it at the time, “We endeavoured to make every man a bomber rather than to concentrate on the production of a number of specialists.” The inspection rewarded the trouble taken—there was nothing their sternest critics could lay a finger on—and at the end of it, those officers and men who had won decorations in the war lined up before the Duke who addressed them. Méricourt days ended with a Battalion dinner in the 1st Battalion billets at Hornoy to General Butler, their old commandant whose brigade was in rest near by. Somehow the memory of such dinners remains with the survivors long after more serious affairs, as it seemed then, have faded. (“It’s a curious thing that, on those occasions, one was drunk before one sat down—out of sheer good-fellowship, I suppose, and the knowledge that we were all for it, and had all come through it so far. The amount of liquor actually consumed has nothing to do with the results. I’ve put away four times as much since Armistice and only got the deuce of a head.”) On the 10th and 11th of November the Division returned to school. They were to take over a stretch of the Fourteenth Corps’ front near Gueudecourt and Lesbœufs. For tactical purposes the Division was now divided into two “groups” of six battalions each. The right group was made up of the 1st Guards Brigade as a whole, with the 1st Coldstream and the 2nd Irish Guards additional. The left was the 3rd Guards Brigade plus the 3rd Grenadiers and the 1st Scots Guards, so that the 2nd Brigade was absorbed for the while. The Battalion left Méricourt-en-Vimeux “with considerable regret” for it was good billets and was packed into a large fleet of French motor-buses, many of which were driven by Senegalese—“an example of the Frenchman’s ability in saving up their men. A particularly engaging ape was the conductor of the officers’ bus. He was fed by the adjutant on chicken legs which he greatly appreciated and entirely devoured. He appeared to speak no word of any human language.” Medals should have been awarded for this affair; to be driven forty miles by Senegalese chauffeurs is an experience deadly almost as warfare. Méaulte, their destination, was then an “entirely unattractive town.” Gangs of Hun prisoners shovelled mud from roads a foot deep in grey reeking slime. Every road was blocked with limbers and lorries that offered no way to the disgusted infantry wedged up impatiently behind them. Their billets were crowded and bad, and they regretted the flesh-pots