And yet I remember the first day of the blizzard as a day of glowing things.  For on the previous night I had read in Battalion Orders that I was to be Captain Ray.  And so, this piercing morning, I could go out into the blizzard with three stars on my shoulders.  With Gallipoli suddenness I had leapt into this exalted rank, while Doe, a more brilliant officer, remained only a Second Lieutenant.  For him, as a specialist, there was no promotion.  For me, no sooner had my O.C.  Company been buried alive by the explosion of a Turkish mine, and his second-in-command gone sick with dysentery, than I, the next senior though only nineteen, was given the rank of Acting Captain.  And Doe, always most generous when most jealous, had been profuse in his congratulations.

I confess that not even the hail, with its icy bite, could spoil the glow which I felt in being Captain Ray.  I walked along my company front, behind parapets massed with snow, to have a look at the men of my command.  All these lads with the chattering lips—­lads from twenty to forty years old—­were mine to do what I liked with.  They were my family—­my children.  And I would be a father to them.

And when, at the end of my inspection, a shivering post corporal put into my hands a letter addressed by my mother to 2nd-Lieut.  R. Ray, I delighted to think how out-of-date she was, and how I must enlighten her at once on the correct method of addressing her son.  I would do it that day, so that she might have opportunities of writing “Capt.  Ray.”  For one never knew:  some unpleasantly senior person might come along and take to himself my honourable rank.

I seized the letter and hurried home to our dug-out.  Doe was already in possession of his mail, so, having wrapped ourselves in blankets to defeat the polar atmosphere, we crouched over a smoking oil-stove and read our letters.

I was the first to break a long silence.

“Really,” I said, “Mother’s rather sweet.  Listen to this:—­

“’Rupert, I had such a shock yesterday.  I heard the postman’s knock, which always frightens me.  I picked up a long, blue envelope, stamped “War Office.”  Oh, my heart stood still.  I went into my bedroom, and tried to compose myself to break the envelope.  Then I asked my new maid to come and be with me when I opened it.  After she had arrived, I said a prayer that all might be well with you.  Then I opened it:  and, Rupert, it was only your Commission as 2nd Lieutenant arriving a year late.  Oh, I went straight to church and gave thanks!’”

Doe gazed into the light of the oil-stove.

“The dear, good, beautiful woman!” he said.

And so it is that the famous blizzard carries with it two glowing memories:  the one, my promotion to Captain’s rank; the other, the sudden arrival of my mother’s letter like a sea-gull out of a storm.  Her loving words threw about me, during the appalling conditions of the afternoon, an atmosphere of England.  And, when in the biting night our elevated home was quiet under the stars, and Doe and I were rolled up in our blankets, I was quite pleased to find him disposed to be sentimental.