icy-chill Nissen huts, supposed to hold thirty, and were thankful for the foul warmth of them. Thence they moved into unstable tents on the outskirts of Méaulte, on the Bray road, where the wind funnels from all parts of the compass, and in alternate snow, rain, and snow again, plumbed the deeps of discomfort. When frost put a crust on the ground they drilled; when it broke they cleaned themselves from mud; and, fair or foul, did their best to "improve" any camp into which fortune decanted them.
It was a test, were one needed, that proved all ranks to the uttermost. The heroism that endures for a day or a week at high tension is a small thing beside that habit of mind which can hold fast to manner, justice, honour and a show of kindliness and toleration, in despite of physical misery and the slow passage of bleak and indistinguishable days. Character and personality, whatever its "crime-sheet" may have been, was worth its weight in gold on the Somme, where a jest counted as high as a rum-ration. All sorts of unsuspected people came to their own as leaders of men or lighteners of care. There were stretcher-bearers, for instance, whose mere presence and personality steadied half a platoon after the shell-burst when, picking themselves up, men's first question out of the dark would be: "Where's So-and-So?" And So-and-So would answer with the dignity of Milesian Kings: "I'm here! Caarry on, lads!"
So, too, with the officers. In the long overseeing of endless fatigues, which are more trying than action, they come to understand the men with a thoroughness that one is inclined to believe that not many corps have reached. Discipline in the Guards, as has been many times pointed out, allowed no excuse whatever for the officer or the man; but once the punishment, or the telling off, had been administered, the sinner and the judge could, and did, discuss everything under heaven. One explanation which strikes at the root of the matter is this: "Ye'll understand that in those days we was
