In the meantime Rouen was ‘magnificient’ (as that hard-worked word would spell itself), but it was not exactly the war, and for all his gaiety Oscar fretted for the front. ‘Still in Rouen, worse luck!’ would come first, like the bad news he really deemed it for all concerned: ‘It is pretty sickening for you not knowing when I am going up—but it will be one[5] of these days.’ ‘It is the absolute edge being kept here like this!’ ‘All very well this slacking round here ... so long as the men aren’t sent up ahead of me I don’t mind so much—that would be too sickening.’ The men—his men—are the child’s children all this time: ‘I have 109 Essex under me—a fine crowd,’ says one letter; and another, ‘The Essex have the best reputation for good conduct here of the whole division. They are a very good lot, this draft of mine’; and again, ‘My men are behaving admirably—and the Adjutant told (Capt:) Mullock yesterday that the Essex gave less trouble than any other Regiment—in the whole division, mark you!!’ And for the last time: ‘I haven’t had a single prisoner to bring before the Adjutant—and we have been here 10 days—a jolly good record—what? The Essex have wrought their Regimental crest in broken glass on some sand at the end of their lines—it is a beautiful piece of work—and they got leave to have it photographed yesterday—I will send you a print if I can get one. This sort of thing makes them take no end of pride in themselves.’ And the same night ‘an order came down that every available officer and man should proceed to the front,’ whereat Oscar exulted with a ‘Hoch! the Kaiser!! “Always merry and bright!”’ and a final scribble as he[6] entrained in charge of his Brigade details: ‘This is glorious—my men are so cheery—talk about the right spirit—they have got it and no mistake!! Marched through Rouen—2000 of us with bag-pipes playing. Love to you all. Oscar.’ The immediate sequel ‘just about put the asphyxiating lid on’; it was also ‘the l-i-m-i-t,’ and everything else that Oscar could lay his pen to; but some foul whiff had caught him by the throat and, within sound of the firing-line, flung him straight into No. 3 General Hospital, Le Tréport, with a temperature and ‘throat as thick as camp water and rasping as a German bayonet.... If only it had been a nice little “dum-dum” I should have felt on an equal footing with these other poor chaps—instead of squatting there in the hospital train opposite them as untouched as a new inner tube!’ It was all the more tantalising because nobody knew better than Oscar that he was ‘missing no end of a scrap,’ as he lay between unforeseen sheets, in the hands of ‘topping Sisters’ (God bless them!) who gave him in spite of everything ‘a fine old time.’