It was in the thick woods bordering the main road from Epernay to Rheims that the D.A.C. lost their show team of roans who fell victims to a bomb in that much bombed area. I can see now the distress on Fraser's face when he told me of the casualty. There were many other gallant four-footed friends who paid the toll of war there. If "the men both good and wise" are right we may yet hope "to give them joyous greeting when we pass the Golden Gate." And so we come to the return journey, back again to the 4th Army Corps. I am glad to say my own especial pets, a very handsome pair of blacks in "A" Battery 310 Brigade, survived the bombs, and before long another battle and the beginning of the glorious end. Indeed, had we but realised it at the time, the beginning had come, and we had participated in it, one of the only four British Divisions which had had the luck of that honour. It was shortly after our return from Rheims that I left the 62nd Division for the 9th Army Corps, so I cannot speak from actual experience of the thrilling excitement and glorious successes which the Division achieved in the 2nd taking of Havrincourt, and in the other great battles which brought this long war to a triumphant conclusion. (I left just after the York and Lancasters made that thrilling bayonet charge in company with the King's Company of the Grenadier Guards on the heights near Mory.) But the story of these culminating triumphs is told in the pages of this book, and it only remains for me to offer one or two remarks. Three things, among others, seem to me to be especially worthy of note: the endurance of the personnel, the youth of the officers in command of batteries, the efficiency of the Territorial gunner and driver. How often do we see the phrase, "The Infantry were withdrawn for a rest, the Artillery remaining, as usual, in the line covering the --th Division." The periodical reliefs of Divisions hardly affected the gunner at all. It was a marvel to me how the various Divisional Artilleries managed to "stick it out." A day or two in the wagon lines now and then seemed all that was necessary to restore officers and men to full vigour and activity again. It was a triumph of endurance. As the war progressed battery commanders became younger and younger. I remember once congratulating an officer on gaining command of a six-gun battery--he had just "put up" his crowns--and making some remark on his age, to be met with the retort, "I'm not so very young, Sir, I'm nearly 21." I wonder what would have been thought of the prophet who, in 1913, had predicted that batteries would be commanded in the greatest of all wars by men of "nearly 21"!