A hard-bitten company of the Veterinary Corps drifted down upon us, and asked if there was beer: they had heard----. We told them, Yes; there was beer, but there was none now. We were sorry. Whereupon, and without enthusiasm, they said that it didn't matter, and drifted away, still searching. Others, but these were of the infantry, forlorn units blown from all knowledge of their whereabouts, we found huddled under the lee of buildings. They bleated at us joylessly, and asked many questions. Was this a sandstorm? Were there many Germans about? and--but this was inevitable and unvaried--had we found many diamonds? We would usually tell them that our kit-bags could hold no more, whereupon they would break down and beg to be taken back to their regiments. We did not, of course, entertain the slightest knowledge of their regiments' whereabouts, but, as something was obviously expected of us, we would indicate variously all four points of the compass, and they would thank us effusively and merge away, one by one, into the muffled landscape. Sandstorms, however, do not last for ever, and there came at last a day when the unchanged hills looked down upon neat acres of canvas and a new and startling activity. All of our immediate world was become a geometric pattern. Wagons, scores upon scores of them, stood axle to axle in a faultless precision that led the eye along ruled lines to ordered rows of water-carts and tethered mules. A group of these last had broken loose, and half a dozen mathematicians with long-handled whips were chasing them back into equational order. Beyond, again, right-angled horse lines and a criss-cross pattern of tents which was the Natal Carbineers' camp played with the Natal Field Artillery's 15-pounders at being an Euclidic proposition. Which, of course, was absurd. It has somewhere been said that an Army represents the only true democracy. This is not true. Nowhere is there so nice a class distinction as in the Army, and nowhere, perhaps, is that nicety so candidly maintained. We, the I.L.H., would not at that time have even dreamed of visiting the infantry, but we called upon the Carbineers because, simply, they were "mounted men," and as such our equals. Later, months later, out of the common thirst and the sandstorms--all men are alike in a sandstorm--there grew the reluctant conviction that active service brings to pass a sort of socialistic millennium in which regiments are judged only by their performances, and in which officers may at times speak quite respectfully to their men, and men almost respectfully of their officers. That the _moral_ of the mounted man is usually superior to that of the "foot-slogger" may be attributed solely to the superior _moral_ of the horse that he rides. This last is an epigram, but true. II--TALES OF THE NATAL FIELD ARTILLERY