This battalion had, like the 57th Rifles, been doing its share in another place. After its first experience in the trenches it had a rest in billets on 27th October, and was at work again on the 29th entrenching a position. Whilst at this duty, at 11 A.M. on the 29th, two companies received orders to proceed to a bridge over the Canal north-west of Hollebeke to support the cavalry in the château there, but at 1.10 P.M. it was moved to Klein Hollebeke to form part of the reserve to the 1st Army Corps, and at 7 P.M. marched back to its billets. The casualties only amounted to twelve killed and wounded. Orders for relief had been issued for 7 A.M. on 30th October, but at 6.30 A.M. the enemy opened a heavy fire which continued throughout the morning. Lieut.-Colonel W. M. Southey was in command of the 129th. His was one of the few battalions of the Indian Corps that I did not then know well, but I had seen them for a few days and made as thorough an inspection as was possible. It had in its ranks Mahsuds and some Mohmands, good fighters in their own Frontier hills; the Mohmands were now being for the first time tested in our regular Army. In consequence these were of necessity young soldiers, but under Southey all soldiers will fight, and notwithstanding their youth the new classes gradually acquired the discipline which is so essential for any military body. Southey soon after this got command of a brigade and at once justified his selection. The 129th was originally raised in 1846 and has always been known as a “Baluchi” battalion. It consisted in 1914 of two companies of Punjabi-Musalmans, three of Mahsuds, and three of other Pathans, and had seen service in Persia, Afghanistan, and Egypt, 1882. The Duke of Connaught is their Colonel-in-Chief. A story is told of Southey during the heavy fighting near Givenchy and Festubert in December 1914. When commanding his battalion in the advanced trenches he received a message from some higher authority directing him to hold on at all costs to his somewhat precarious position—“Never mind about holding on, I will of course do that, but where are my rations?”