To suffer such losses and be again ready for battle within a few weeks needs discipline of a high order, and I was lost in admiration of those gallant corps, which I had inspected only a few days previously in their full war strength, and saw again after their arrival in billets. The ranks were sadly thinned, but there was no sign of despondency and only determination on their faces. “Give us their hand-grenades and trench mortars,” said a Gurkha havildar to me, “and you will see some fun.” During the attack by the Secunderabad Cavalry Brigade Captain Alan Ross, 20th Deccan Horse, performed a very gallant action, which in any other war would have been rewarded with a Victoria Cross; but I was informed that in France it could not be given to officers for saving life alone. Ross was one of the hardest men I ever knew: a brilliant polo player and a strong rider all round. He had been my own A.D.C. years before in India. Seeing an Indian officer was wounded and lying in the open, he with two of his N.C.O.’s, Duffadars Shankar Rao and Sardar Singh, ran under a terrific fire and carried him back. On reaching a ditch they lay down, and seeing the Indian officer was too badly hit to be moved further, Ross ran back, still under heavy fire, and fetched up a stretcher, in which they placed the wounded officer and got him away. Ross received a D.S.O. and his two companions the Indian Order of Merit. Captain W. H. Padday, 47th Sikhs, was killed whilst bombing up a trench with some of his men. The 20th Deccan Horse, a Corps which I had known in years past when I commanded the Secunderabad Division, suffered over eighty casualties, including Captain J. S. McEuan and Risaldar Mir Hidayat Ali killed; Captain C. A. Mackenzie, Risaldar-Major Jharmal Singh, and one other Indian officer and thirty-five other ranks killed and missing; besides these, five officers and thirty-seven men were wounded. The 47th Sikhs, of whom I shall often have to write, had 130; the 34th Poona Horse fifty, including Major C. Loring, 37th Lancers, attached. The Jodhpore Lancers in this, their first fight as a unit on the Western Front, suffered eleven casualties. In the 8th Gurkhas one Indian officer was killed, and there were twenty-two other losses.