I have been on many a long round of trenches with the Brigadiers through mud and water and evil smells, along roads in view of the Germans where bullets sang and snapped, across fields where shells were plumping, right up to the firing-line, where “whizz-bangs” were demolishing the parapet. I have often found myself admiring the physical endurance and the calm courage of these Brigadiers--who are not all young men--and have read the reflection of my own thought in the eyes of the men in the trenches who saluted as we passed. It is in the firing-line that the relationship between officer and man, which it has taken so many decades to build up in the British Army, comes to full fruition. Its essence is the spirit of the playground. I am sure that the British officer is to his men, more than anything else, the captain of the team. The game is stern, the stakes are high, but the spirit is the old one: “Buck up! and play the game!” Officer and man live together in closer companionship than ever was possible before they entered the firing-line. Their bond of mutual confidence is sealed by a thousand recollections of dangers faced together, of assaults side by side against the enemy, of perilous patrols at night. The daily tragedies of the trenches unite them still closer, drawing them together as men sleeping in the open will huddle up for warmth. A young Captain was in his dug-out in the trenches one day, when word came back to him that one of his men had been sniped. He hurried out and along the trench to the spot indicated. As he came to a traverse, a man sprang out of a “funk-hole.” “Don’t go round there, sir,” he said; “there’s a sniper watching that traverse. He’s just got one of the men.” In a feeling of spontaneous sympathy the young officer went on. As he rounded the traverse in sight of his man, who had just expired on the floor of the trench, the sniper’s rifle cracked again, and the officer collapsed with a bullet through the body. There was no doctor in the trench at the time. The wounded man’s comrades, who examined him, found that he had been shot through the abdomen. The only chance of life was to leave him where he lay. So, while a message was sent down for the doctor, his men built a shelter over him in the open trench. Food or drink are fatal in the case of grave internal wounds like this. The wounded man was racked with thirst, but all they could do was to moisten his lips from time to time with a damp handkerchief. The men in his company went about their duties with set faces, for, one and all, they loved their Captain. His servant was in despair, and watched him in his shelter. His best friend in the regiment, the Captain of another company, sat with him until evening, when he had to go to take his company back into reserve.