One of the Dorsets’ officers reports that “owing to the continuous fighting the ‘evening meal’ has become conspicuous by its absence,” but in spite of having carried a 1lb. tin of compressed beef and a few biscuits about with them for several days they are all “most beastly fit on it.”  “No one seems any the worse, and I feel all the fitter,” writes an officer of a Highland Regiment, “after long marches in the rain going to bed as wet as a Scotch mist.”

The men are just as cheerful as their officers.  “You can’t expect a blooming Ritz Hotel in the firing line,” is how a jocular Cockney puts it.  An artilleryman says they would fare sumptuously if it weren’t for the German shells at meal times:  “one shell, for instance, shattered our old porridge pot before we’d had a spoonful out of it!” Lieutenant Jardine, a son of Sir John Jardine, M.P., relates this same incident.  Gunner Prince, R.F.A., has a little joke about the sleeping quarters:  “Just going to bed.  Did I say bed?  I mean under the gun with an overcoat for a blanket.”  There is no sort of grumbling at all.  As Lieutenant Stringer, of the 5th Lancers, expresses it, the A.S.C. “manage things very well, and our motto is ‘always merry and bright.’”

Occasionally, when there is a lull in the operations, the men dine gloriously.  Stories are told of gargantuan feeds—­of majestic stews that can be scented even in the German lines.  Occasionally, too, there is the capture of a banquet prepared for the enemy’s officers as the following message from the Standard illustrates:  “A small party of our cavalry were out on reconnaissance work, scouring woods and searching the countryside.  Just about dusk a hail of bullets came upon our party from a small spinney of fir trees on the side of a hill.  We instantly wheeled off as if we were retreating, but, in fact, we merely pretended to retire and galloped round across plowed land to the other side of the spinney, fired on the men, and they mounted their horses and flew like lightning out of their ‘supper room.’  They left a finely cooked repast of beef-steaks, onions and fried potatoes all ready and done to a turn, with about fifty bottles of Pilsner lager beer, which was an acceptable relish to our meal.  Ten of our men gave chase and returned for an excellent feed.”

Another amusing capture is that of an enterprising Tommy who possessed himself of a German officer’s bearskin, a cap, helmet, and Jaeger sleeping bag.  He is now regarded as the “toff of the regiment.”  The luxury of a bath was indulged in by a company of Berkshires at one encampment.  Forty wine barrels nearly full of water were discovered here, and the thirsty men were about to drink it when their officer stopped them.  “Well,” said one, “if it’s not good enough to drink it’ll do to wash in,” and with one accord they stripped and jumped into the barrels!  Nothing has been more notable than Tommy’s desire for cleanliness and tidiness.  It is something fine and healthy about the British soldier.  One wounded man, driven up to a hospital, limped with difficulty to a barber’s shop for a shave before he would enter the building.  “I couldn’t face the doctors and nurses looking like I was,” he told the ambulance attendant.