It speaks volumes for the energy of the young Prince that, although he only joined the Grenadier Guards at the beginning of the war, he should have rapidly passed through the necessary preliminary training, and then have succeeded in overcoming any opposition to his dearest wish. In the earliest days of the war the Prince was seen taking his turn on the guard at St. James’s, and performing the ordinary routine duty of a Guards Subaltern. This, however, was not to last long, and soon the happy day came when the _London Gazette_ announced the appointment of Lieutenant the Prince of Wales, K.G., Grenadier Guards, to be A.D.C. to Field-Marshal Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in the Field; and the Prince left for General Headquarters. Then for a long time we heard no more of the Prince of Wales. Now and again a soldier’s letter from the front contained a brief mention of his doings--that the Prince had been in the trenches or had visited a hospital--and an occasional paragraph in the French newspapers revealed the fact that he had been in the French or Belgian lines. But it was the Commander-in-Chief himself who first broke the silence anent the Prince’s doings. In his despatch dealing with the battle of Neuve Chapelle he mentioned that the Prince of Wales had acted as _liaison_ officer with the First Army during that engagement, and paid a tribute to the zeal and quickness with which the Prince had discharged his duties, and the deep interest he took in the comfort and general welfare of the men. It was the Prince of Wales himself who brought that despatch to London, and Londoners were able to see for themselves how he had filled out and hardened during the months he had spent with the army in the field. His eyes shone with the light of health, his face was tanned with exposure to the rain and wind of winter and the pale sunshine of spring in Flanders, and his whole being exuded that bodily fitness and mental vigour which are the symptoms of a man whose heart is in his work. This was my impression of the Prince when I saw him in the field myself one wet afternoon in March. It was when the Second Army, with whom I was on that particular occasion, was carrying out a local attack against the Germans in the northern part of our line. The valley was heavy with mist, and reverberating with the sound of our guns carrying out the artillery preparation, our shrapnel bursting with a gleam of orange-coloured fire against the white haze enveloping the ridge we were going to attack.