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months of sick leave. Three weeks at home after hospital was now the maximum; then back to duty.
    On the Monday afternoon a trio of senior subalterns reported to Phillip at the same time: the eldest an Ulsterman, with an arm cut off above the elbow; the other two were Gaultshire men, one with a red weal zigzagging across his forehead and a careful manner of enunciation, as though his tongue were a little thick; the third had a glass eye, looking as though it were about to fall out of the raggedly healed skin of the socket, while the live eye stared fierce as a falcon’s.
    Phillip wrote the names in the Arrivals book—Docherty, Tabor, and Hedges—all three B2—before taking them in to the colonel, after knocking on the door to ask if Lord S. would see them. Lord S. was always available for such visits.
    After they had gone, Phillip was called in to take down at dictation a confidential report by the Colonel upon an officer who had overstayed his leave by two weeks, and then had deserted. He had been arrested in plain clothes by the Metropolitan Police in London, handed over to the Provost Marshal’s office at Horse Guards, and brought down under close arrest to Landguard Camp. There he awaited, without his belt but in uniform, a General Court Martial. One of Phillip’s duties was to visit him daily in his quarters to ask if there were any complaints, and to replace the officer-guard of the past twenty-four hours.
    While Lord Satchville was dictating the excellent record of the officer before his unfortunate attachment to a young woman a year or two his senior, who before her marriage from the musical comedy stage was an actress much remarked for her skill in suggesting innocence and charm, Captain Henniker-Sudley knocked and entered, saying, “General Mowbray, sir!” and withdrawing, ushered in a figure with inflexibly authoritative face that Phillip remembered as belonging to the colonel of the 1st battalion at Loos.
    He stood up, and with notebook and pencil, prepared to leave the room, following the adjutant; but Lord Satchville after greeting his guest turned to Phillip and said to the General, “You will remember Maddison, who took command of the First battalion after Captain West had been hit, and captured the Lone Tree position, Mowbray——?”
    “Yes,” replied the General. “How do you do,” as he held out his hand.
    Phillip was still glowing with satisfaction, while typing a request to all company commanders for a nominal roll of men who before enlistment were ( a )boiler-riveters and ( b )internal combustion engine crankshaft forgers, when Capt. Henniker-Sudley came to him and said, “The Colonel wants you to make notes of the information he is about to be given by General Mowbray, from which you will write a summary afterwards.”
    Phillip had done a similar job before; and entering the room quietly, without speaking seated himself at a side table, notebook and pencil ready.
    Colonel Mowbray, now a temporary Major-General commanding a division on the Western Front, told Lord Satchville that the order coming from Whitehall to reduce all infantry brigades from four to three battalions was considered by all commanders in the field to be a serious mistake, particularly as it was confirmed that preparations for a German attack on the greatest scale were well-advanced.
    The voice, grave and modulated, declared that the newly-constituted infantry brigades would not, in all probability, be given time in which to practise and learn the new tactics required with one battalion acting as both support and reserve to two battalions in line. He said that the infantry required training in the tactics of open warfare, but every day and every night large working parties had to be found for the Sappers, to augment the pioneers and labour battalions working in the new Battle Zones now being prepared along the fourteen miles of line recently taken over from the French.
    “What are the Battle Zones, Mowbray?”
    “One