Such was the first introduction of the Thirteenth to actual fighting in the Great War. It was very different from what they had hoped--a dreary struggle of endurance against mud and cold, on foot, instead of the stirring hand-to-hand work in the saddle for which a cavalryman naturally longs; but the account shows the cheery spirit in which the men took to their uncongenial duty. Needless to say, the officers set them a good example. One of them, Lieutenant Watson Smyth (14th January 1915), writes: “We got up at Enquingatte, where we were billeted, at 6 A.M. on Wednesday, and at 8 had a three-mile march to another village, Estrée Blanche, where the whole Brigade was concentrated. At about 10.30 along came a fleet of motor omnibuses (London General Company), and halted along the line of troops. We were then told off, and twenty-five men and one officer went in each bus. The buses have the glass out of the windows and the space is boarded up, otherwise they are the same, except that the outside advertisements are painted over, and the whole bus is dark grey (please excuse my writing, but we are under shell-fire--75 mm. shrapnel--and I am expecting one through the roof any minute). To go on, we left in our buses at 11 A.M. Soon after starting, one skidded into the ditch and had to be jacked and dug out, but this got to be quite a common occurrence later in the trip. At about 1 P.M. we arrived at Béthune, about seven miles from the trenches. We stayed there for an hour, and had our lunch while the men had their dinners. At about 2.30 we got going again, this time on our flat feet, and marched about four and a half miles to a village, Festubert, where we halted. Here we all got a drink of beer, followed by coffee and rum. At 4.45 P.M. we started again, and this time went right on up to just behind the trenches. Here I, with eight men who had volunteered for the job, went on to ----, about 400 yards in front of our machine-guns, which were on the left of our line.... When I got up to it we were challenged by the post of the Regiment that we were relieving, and then I went up to them. I asked if they were all right. In a very despondent voice he replied, ‘I’ve two men nearly dead with cold: they are both unconscious, and I don’t know how I’ll get them back.’ Just at that moment one more man went over flop. I thought this was a jolly start, as I was going to be there all night and these fellows had been there in the day. We had great trouble to get them out, as the trench was knee-deep in the most holding mud I had ever met. It beat Wadhurst clay by three stone and a distance. Another difficulty was the fact that the Germans, who were about 600 yards in front, or perhaps a bit more (people are talking all round me, and I keep writing what I hear), kept on sending up ‘Very’ lights and star-shells, which lit up the whole place far better than it was lit up in the daytime. Owing to the snipers, who were lying up all over the place, we had to drop flat as