The War Office needed the raw material for a desperate enterprise. It was found by Brigadier-General Byron, himself an able and experienced soldier with a brilliant South African fighting reputation. He went across to Flanders and picked out the cream of the fighting men from the South African contingent and from the magnificent Australian and Canadian Divisions. I do not recall a single officer {4} or N.C.O. who had not won at least one decoration for bravery. We had with us, too, a small party of Russian officers who, fleeing from the Red Terror when their army broke and melted away, remained loyal to the Entente, and volunteered for the Caucasus, where they hoped to prove to the Bolsheviks that the cause of Russian national and military honour was not entirely lost. Our Russian allies for the Caucasus were mostly young men, enthusiastic and keen soldiers, endowed with the splendid fighting spirit of the old Russian Army such as I knew it in the early spring campaign of 1915 in Bukovina, when it fought with empty rifles and stood up to the encircling Austrians in those terrible February days that preceded and followed the evacuation of Czernowitch. On the _Malwa_, I remember, we had with us Captain Bray, an Anglo-Russian who had been a liaison officer in London, and spoke English like an Englishman. Then there was a Colonel who had been earmarked for death when his regiment mutinied and went "Red" at Viborg in Finland. Scantily clad, he had escaped his would-be assassins, fleeing bare-footed into the darkness of the Finnish winter night. After many hairbreadth escapes he had gained Swedish territory and safety. [Illustration: BRITISH TRAINED PERSIAN POLICE.] There was also Captain George Eve, an Anglo-Russian mining engineer, who came from South America to enlist, and who, because of his accent and foreign appearance, had been arrested more than {5} once in the front line in Flanders on suspicion of being a German spy dressed in British uniform. Colonel Smiles of the Armoured Car Section was another interesting figure. A descendant of Smiles of "Self-Help" fame, he had won the D.S.O. and the Cross of St. George while fighting with the Locker-Lampson unit in Russia. Where practically every second man had a record of thrilling deeds behind him it is difficult to individualize, but a word must be given to Colonel Warden, D.S.O., of the Canadian Contingent. "Honest John" was the affectionate nickname bestowed upon him by the ship's company, who found a special fascination in his childlike simplicity of character combined with exceptional soldierly qualities.