I had known the 2nd battalion 8th Gurkha Rifles since 1886 when they were known as the 43rd Gurkha Light Infantry, and they had borne many different titles since, being reorganised as the 2/8th Gurkha Rifles in 1907. I had served beside them in Burmah 1885–87. They were composed of a fine sturdy lot of men, and had they not had the misfortune to start their very first day in France exposed to a prolonged shelling, followed by a series of heavy attacks, they would not have been so heavily handicapped during the entire campaign as they were by the loss of practically all their own officers at one sweep—the most severe trial an Indian battalion can possibly undergo. The 58th Vaughans Rifles was an old Punjab Frontier Force battalion; and I soldiered alongside it in the days when it was known as the 5th Punjab Infantry. It was given its present title in 1903. The ranks were filled by Sikhs, Dogras, Pathans, and Punjabi-Musalmans. The battalion took part in nearly all the fighting of the Indian Corps in France, and was ably commanded by Lieut.-Colonel Davidson-Houston, who succeeded to it on the death of Colonel Venour; he later was awarded the D.S.O. and was killed in the attack on the German trenches opposite Mauquissart on the 25th September 1915, and thus the regiment lost two of its commanding officers. One of the last letters he ever wrote was to me (mostly about his beloved battalion) on the eve of his death. No. 1811, Havildar Karam Singh of the 58th was awarded the Indian Order of Merit for gallantly remaining on in command of his section after being severely wounded. The Army Corps being now established in its trenches, with different members of my Staff I began a regular round of various portions of the front and visits to the Divisional commanders and Brigadiers. During these tours, which I kept up regularly throughout my tenure of command, I saw over and over again every battalion, regiment and battery in the Corps and inspected every unit forming the Transport, Supply, Medical, etc., and of course every detail of the Hospitals, from the trenches to the railhead. I made a regular practice of doing as much of all this as it was possible to do on horseback, and I am convinced that no ordinary person on the Staff should ever have had a day’s sickness who, wet or fine, mud or dust, took his exercise, and hard exercise too, without fail. Of course the regimental officers and men and all others connected with them had to live a life not only of daily labour, peril and discomfort, but had to do it on foot, and to them must always be awarded the palm of all toil. But I am now writing of the higher Staffs; whatever their responsibilities, they lived in comfort, they slept in houses, and shared comparatively few of the dangers of the war, and yet there were some who were too fond of the motor-car, and whose horses stood idle awaiting the great advance, which did not come till four years later.