No. 105671A.    The Camp Commandant presents his compliments to
---------     Mr. M., and begs to inform him that he is not an
2         ironmonger.  The correct procedure is for Mr. M.
to direct his servant to purchase a shovel and to send in the
account to the C.C., by whom it will be discharged.

The Commandant, quite needlessly, apologised to me afterwards for his reply, explaining mournfully that the whole staff appeared to be under the impression that he was a kind of Harrods’ Stores.  He could supply desks and tables—­the sappers are amazingly efficient at turning them out at the shortest notice—­and he could produce stationery, but he drew the line at ironmongery.  But his principal task is to let lodgings.

The Q.M.G. and his satellites, who are the universal providers of the Army, have already been described.  Their waggons are known as “transports of delight,” and they can supply you with anything from a field-dressing to a toothbrush, and from an overcoat to a cake of soap.  And as the Q.M.G. is concerned with goods, the A.G. is preoccupied with men.  He makes up drafts as a railway transport officer makes up trains, and can tell you the location of every unit from a brigade to a battalion.  Also, he and his deputy assistants make up casualty lists.  It is expeditiously done; each night’s casualty list contains the names of all casualties among officers up till noon of the day on which it is made out. (The lists of the men, which are, of course, a much bigger affair, are made up at the Base.) The task is no light one—­the transposition of an initial or the attribution of a casualty to a wrong battalion may mean gratuitous sorrow and anxiety in some distant home in England.  And there is the mournful problem of the “missing,” the agonised letters from those who do not know whether those they love are alive or dead.

It is only right to say that everything that can possibly be done is done to trace such cases.  More than that, the graves of fallen officers and men are carefully located and registered by a Graves Registry Department, with an officer of field rank in charge of it.  Those graves lie everywhere; I have seen them in the flower-bed of a chateau used as the H.Q. of an A.D.M.S.; they are to be found by the roadside, in the curtilage of farms, and on the outskirts of villages.  The whole of the Front is one vast cemetery—­a “God’s Acre” hallowed by prayers if unconsecrated by the rites of the Church.  The French Government has shown a noble solicitude for the feelings of the bereaved, and a Bill has been submitted to the Chamber of Deputies for the expropriation of every grave with a view to its preservation.