What’s happened to Bully Beef and Suzette? That question has been in my mind, in the mind of the Major, and probably in every gunner’s and driver’s mind ever since we marched out from the wagon-lines. It’s dead against all army orders that a woman and child should accompany a fighting unit into action. Since the war started, camp-followers of whatever sort have been forbidden. From time to time, even the dogs in the army areas have been shot because many of them were spies, carrying messages to the Germans across No Man’s Land at night. It’s dead against every dictate of decency and humanity that fighting-men should take non-combatants with them into the kind of furious carnage towards which we——. But, somehow, Bully Beef and Suzette do not seem to be non-combatants; we regard them as soldiers. They march with us as representatives of the impassioned soul of France. Yes, and more than that—for they stand to us for everything tender and kindly that would have been ours, had we not been selected to die. Suzette is to us what Joan of Arc must have been to her soldiers—the dream of the woman we would have married had Fate been more lavish with life. And Bully Beef—he’s the might-have-been child of every boy and man in the battery. Gun-carriages and wagons have been pulled well over to the right, clear of the pavi road, so as not to cause a block in the passing traffic. It’s difficult to see them in detail on account of the blackness caused by the wall of trees on either side. One can just make out the heads of horses and the huddled figures of men on the limbers, too tired to know that we have halted. Usually when I enquire, I find that the sleepers were on guard or picket the night previous. We let them sleep on. They are wise; none of us know how far we have to go or how many nights of wakefulness lie before us.