I was rapturously received. One of the chairs was cleared of its contents. On shouts of “Orderly,” a door in the corner opened, and a strong smell of frying and a greasy-looking soldier in a grey army shirt and khaki trousers emerged simultaneously. He brought glasses and a bottle of local beer; the box of cigarettes was produced, and then I was ordered summarily to tell the company what was happening at home and at the front. Was America coming in? And Italy? (This was before Italy’s intervention.) What were they going to do with that fellow, Ramsay Macdonald? They heard nothing, nothing, where they were. Were the cavalry _never_ coming into action in this dam-fool hole-in-the-ground war? They might be at Shorncliffe for all they were seeing of the war.... Would I come round the horse-lines before lunch? The man I had come to see, a Captain, conducted me via the dung-heap, the duck-pond, and the pigs to an orchard where the horses of this squadron were picketed in a sea of mud. It was a sad, weeping morning, like a spring day in Ireland. The horses looked very fit despite the wet winter they had passed through. “Mind that little ’orse, sir,” said a grizzled old private as we passed. “Rather a character, that man,” said my friend: “re-engaged; typical old soldier; regular scamp. Talk to him.” He was a wizened little man in the forties, with a horsy manner, and had been all through the retreat from Mons. Only one of his remarks has stuck in my head. I was asking him about the food. He was pleased to be very well satisfied with the efforts of the A.S.C. on his behalf. “No one ain’t got no cause to grumble,” he said, “and that’s the truth. You gets yer grub reg’lar, and that’s more than a lot of them in this army did before. Of course”--with fine sarcasm--“there is some as wants stewed apples and custard ev’ry day for dinner, and there’s no pleasing the likes of those. No, sir, the food’s all right.” By the time we returned to the farm-house the table had been cleared and set with a number of tin plates, a loaf of ration bread, and some tin cups. It was a rough meal, there is no denying the fact. There were sardines as _hors-d’œuvre_, some very tough roast beef, and potatoes, and some tinned apricots and boiled rice. We washed it down with very strong tea and condensed milk out of the aforesaid tin cups. “D’you mind tea?” asked my host apologetically. “We mostly have it for lunch.” I did not mind a bit. But I wondered idly to myself what the 3rd Hussars would have said if, a few months previously, you had suggested tea for lunch in their elegant mess at home!