The officers did not seem to me to be quite sure of themselves. They had a certain earnestness of mien, a certain formality of manner, and seemed inclined to hold aloof from their men. It is only the fire-trench, after all, that teaches the new officer the exact proportion of familiarity that discipline permits between officers and men. Their equipment, too, seemed rather more elaborate than was consonant with comfort on a long march through the wet. Their caps were stiff-crowned, they wore heavy overcoats, and over them their web equipment hung, attached to it a more or less large variety of the leather-bound articles that people at home present to the departing warrior, most of which he discards after a week or two in the trenches, and their puttees were quite impeccably tied. To me, who had grown accustomed to the _négligé_ of dress and manner of the fire-trench, these small distinctions were probably more apparent than they would have been to an ordinary observer. It was not until months later that I saw the North Midland Division again. It was a thundery summer day in the trenches, with bursts of hot sunshine alternating with drenching showers. The trenches were ankle-deep in mud and water, and had been dug in many places through the all too shallow burial-places of the dead of former fights. In some places the British and German lines were very close together, and there was short shrift for him who should thrust his head, even for a moment, above the shelter of the parapet. In these unwholesome surroundings I found my Territorials of Merris again. But in the sunburnt, calmly deliberate veterans who manned the parapet I scarcely recognized the young troops with the half-fledged air that I had seen standing in the rain on that March afternoon. The conditions in those trenches on that showery morning were, I imagine, incomparably worse than anything the Division had undergone before. But the men made the best of things, and woebegone and weather-stained though they were in appearance, went about their normal round of duties as though they had been living all their lives in mud and water and in close proximity to a dangerous foe. Over fires skilfully contrived in dry corners some were cooking pannikins of savoury soup and steaming tea; others, who had been on guard all night, slept as peacefully as children, though “whizz-bangs” burst noisily to and fro about the parapet, and now and again the thunder rolled imperiously above the sound of the guns. The rain came down steadily; every trench was a slough of sticky, yellow clay and foul water; the walls of dug-out and “funk-hole” reeked with damp. But the sleepers slept on, those who could not find room in a “funk-hole” lying on the “fire-stand,” completely enveloped in their great-coats or waterproof sheets.