We found the change of tenants in the villages round us extremely advantageous in many ways, not the least of which was the amount of loot we acquired. It seems curious that the British Army, equipped as it is with a more copious transport than has ever before been imagined, should invariably leave in its wake enormous quantities of perfectly serviceable stores. On this particular occasion we found abandoned more than enough overcoats and waterproof capes to fit out the whole battery, and collected from the billets into which we moved over a hundred thousand rounds of small-arm ammunition alone. Although these matters were reported, no steps were ever taken to remove the stores, and subsequent discoveries of hundreds of boxes of unused bombs met with the same indifference. What wonder that the thrifty French regard it as the best fortune that can befall them to take over any part of our line, or that French officers to whom I have spoken are inclined to base their opinions of our conduct of the war upon such indications of our national habits. "No army before has ever wasted as you waste," said one to me; "the food you reject would feed half the French Forces, the rifles you failed to collect after Loos would equip many battalions of your New Army. What is your proverb--'Straws show which way the wind blows'--is it not?" Nor did the British troops leave only stores behind in their evacuation. Two days after the exchange, an officer arrived in the battery with a strange tale of woe. He was in command of a picquet in a certain village, from where he had watched his own people depart and the French arrive, expecting every moment to be relieved. Since that time he had received neither orders nor rations, and he and his men had lived upon the charity of a French regiment. We fed him and sent him back to his lonely vigil with an armful of provisions and a promise to report his troubles through our headquarters. I heard subsequently that his patrol had been forgotten and never missed, so presumably he might have been there now but for his own action.