Nothing could save the Hun now, and he advanced trembling from head to foot, for surely the other two had only left him alive through being engrossed in conversation and hence not having noticed him. He moved on saying his last prayer, when the little Gurkha suddenly realising his position pulled himself together and came to attention. The last hour of the deserter had at last come; the hand of the man from Nepal went first to his side; it must be the terrible _kukry_ he was about to draw, but instead of ending the career of the German our Gurkha gave him a smart salute. The deserter, wondering whether he was indeed face to face with his brutal and ferocious foe or in a dream, breathed freely and went on his way. At last to his great relief appeared a British soldier, and he now thought all was well. Imagine his final surprise when he was hailed with, “What the something are you doing here?” and at the same time he felt a bayonet point unpleasantly close to his hinder parts. He went calmly to the guard-room; he had changed his mind about the bloodthirsty Indians. One more story of Indians and Germans. One night a British officer was out scouting in front of his Corps in “No Man’s Land,” accompanied by his Indian orderly. The pair had very stealthily approached the enemy trench and were within a few yards of it, when a German, who had been watching unknown of course to them, covered the officer with his rifle and said, “You are a brave man and I do not wish to shoot you; go back.” They went back; but this time it was the sepoy’s turn to wonder why he had been told that the Boches were such fiends. On the 14th January 1915 two of our Brigades, as I said before, again took over trenches, and by the 24th the whole Corps was once more holding a front which extended from a point west of Neuve Chapelle on the north to the vicinity of Givenchy on the south, connecting there with the First Army Corps. At this time our strength was close on 21,000 rifles, 900 sabres, and 120 guns. During February I learned that it was the intention of Sir John French at an early date to carry out a big operation in the vicinity of Neuve Chapelle, and that it was to be the good fortune of the Indian Corps to take a prominent part in it. The battle of Neuve Chapelle is what resulted, and that I shall shortly describe. But before doing so I will deal with certain matters which affected the Indian Corps, and which may be of interest to my readers.