After that they were hurried off to do intensive training for Cambrai. Then came the battle, in the last three days of which a very much exhausted 2nd Driver Smith was wounded in the face by a bullet splash. The trouble was not serious enough to get him to England, and on his return from an all too brief stay in a Hospital in France, he again found himself at the Depot. This time, after only a day in the Reception Company and after a medical examination, he was posted for fourteen days to the Seaside Rest Camp at Merlimont. This Rest Camp consisted of rows and rows of rather pretty bungalows built among the sand dunes. Here both men and officers were given a very pleasant time, though they were still under military discipline and had a certain number of parades to keep. For the officers there was a comfortable club, and for the men an exceedingly well-run Y.M.C.A. hut, where there were concerts or pierrot shows almost nightly--either home-grown or imported. Games and, in summer, swimming and bathing were great features. There is no doubt, first, that the Camp was immensely popular, and, secondly, that the Tank Corps owed a good deal of its cheerful spirit and high _moral_ to the refreshment which the Camp afforded to many a weary body and mind. After this fortnight by the sea Smith rejoined his Battalion, and was, with the rest of the Tank world, plunged into winter training. V The general organisation of the 1917–18 training, though, of course, on a much larger scale, was very much like that of the previous winter. New training centres had been established and old centres extended. But perhaps a chronicle of the numbers who passed through these courses of instruction at Wailly, Le Tréport, Bermicourt and Merlimont, and of the sequence in which the different Brigades took their turns at the different areas, might prove less interesting than a brief account of what was actually taught and of the sort of way a syllabus would be carried out. In the official “Instructions for the Training of the Tank Corps in France” these are the sort of general principles we find laid down: “All work must be carried out at high pressure. Every exercise and movement should, if possible, be reduced to a precise drill. “Games will be organised as a definite part of training (see S.S. 137, ‘Recreational Training’). “Order is best cultivated by carrying out all work on a fixed plan. Order is the foundation of discipline. Small things like marching men always at attention to and from work, making them stand to attention before dismissing them, assist in cultivating steadiness and discipline. Each day should commence with a careful inspection of the billets and the men, or some similar formal parade. Strict march discipline to and from the training grounds must be insisted upon.