The Battalion was never in the Army on the Rhine. After time spent at Cambrai we travelled back to Domart, a village mid-way between Amiens and Abbeville. In duration the journey surpassed all records. Three days we spent impatiently waiting for a train, and two more patiently waiting in the train itself; and we arrived at the destination faced with a ten-mile march in rain and pitch darkness. Happily the war was still sufficiently recent for such delay to pass as comedy. At Domart the one real topic was Demobilisation. I could set myself no harder task than a description of the workings of this engine. Few people understood how they were themselves demobilised, and fewer cared how others were. That the scheme worked on the whole well and justly was in great measure due to Symonds, whose zealous energy, though the Battalion was lessoning daily, never flagged. For two months Battalion drill and the 'Education Scheme' occupied our mornings, football our afternoons. Christmas was a great festival. The 'Frolics' pantomime visited the village, in which the Battalion pioneers, under the direction of Cameron, the Brigade signalling officer, had transformed an empty building into a capital theatre. General Thorne, who had so successfully commanded the 184th Infantry Brigade in its last battle, was unstinting in his efforts to give the men's life in the army a happy and useful conclusion. He secured visits from all the best concert parties and raised a fund to finance the department of Brigade entertainments, of which Nicholas, the Brigade Major, was chief minister. A weekly magazine was started, which ran to its fourth number. Truly the arts flourished. In a windy field south of the village the Battalion was in January presented with its colour by Major-General Duncan. The occasion passed off well. Its feature was the admirable speech made by the Colonel. In February the Battalion, which it was known would be made up with drafts and retained for service as a unit, was sent to Etaples to assist in the Demobilisation scheme. For a month we remained meeting trains, escorting parties to camps, sorting clothing, and driving herds of the demobilised through the intricacies of a machine called the 'Delouser,' until the arriving trainloads decreased, dwindled, and finally stopped. In March several large drafts of officers and men, to replace all those who had been, or would be, demobilised, joined the Battalion, which, after a pause at Le Treport and some leave, sailed for Egypt. Thither my story does not follow it. When peace was signed, the cadre of the Battalion had not returned to Oxford. On Christmas Dav 1919 the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry was still serving overseas. [Illustration: THE ADJUTANT AT HIS DESK] [Illustration: CAMBRAI: THE HOTEL DE VILLE] [Illustration: THE BATTALION COOKS AT STAPLES] [Illustration: LIEUT.-COL. E. M. WOULFE-FLANAGAN. C.M.G. D.S.O.] [Illustration: REGIMENTAL SERGT. MAJOR HEDLEY]