(This despatch rider's stories are dedicated "To the Perfect Mother--My Own." He describes "Enlisting"; "The Journey to the Front"; "The Battle of Mons"; "The Great Retreat"; "Over the Marne to the Aisne"--and many other adventures.) FOOTNOTES: [7] All numerals relate to stories told herein--not to chapters in the book. [8] Dorsets, I think. [9] I do not say this paragraph is true. It is what I thought on 15th October, 1914. The weather was depressing. [10] Optimist! [11] After nine months at the Front--six and a half months as a despatch rider and two and a half months as a cyclist officer--I have decided that the English language has no superlative sufficient to describe our infantry. WITH A B.-P. SCOUT IN GALLIPOLI--ON THE TURKISH FRONTIER _A Record of the Belton Bulldogs_ _Told by Edmund Yerbury Priestman, Scoutmaster of the 16th (Westbourne) Sheffield Boy Scouts_ These anecdotes and experiences are related in the letters written home by a scoutmaster serving as a subaltern. The author, at the outbreak of the War, officered the Boy Scouts who were guarding places of danger from spies in England. He took a commission in the 6th Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment, and shipped for Suvla Bay in the Dardanelles Campaign. Here this young English officer of twenty-five years of age fell in action on November 19th, 1915. His letters have been collected into a book under title "With a B.-P. Scout in Gallipoli." They form one of the few really humorous books the War has produced, with an irrepressible outburst of a youth who always saw the cheerful side of life. Some of these letters are here reproduced with courtesy of his American publishers, _E. P. Dutton and Company_, of New York. All rights reserved. [12] I--STORY OF A DUGOUT UNDER JOHNNY TURK'S GUNS Somewhere in Turkey. I am sitting on a rolled-up valise, a sort of hold-all in a dugout on a hillside, while a weary "fatigue" party is digging more dugouts. Writing isn't easy, as I have to balance the paper on my knee, so pardon! This little hole in Europe (_i.e._ this dugout) appears to belong to a Second-Lieutenant Huggins--at least, that's the name of the valise--and taken all round it is quite a good hole to live in. Our life has become analogous to the life of a rabbit, and we vie with each other as to the security of our respective burrows against the little attentions paid us daily by the Turkish gunners. Mr. Huggins, so far as security goes, has done well, as his lair is dug some five feet deep and strongly built up with stone parapets. Lying at the bottom he (or the present occupier, E. Y. P.) would be fairly safe against either shrapnel or high explosive. But when he lays him down to sleep I guess Huggins will be one of the sickest soldiers on the Peninsula, for in the left-hand a party of some 1,000,000 ants are at this moment digging themselves in! Itchi koo! as the song says.