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By Root 1839 0

at Berkhamsted the Inns of Court Battalion was drawn up on Kitchener’s Field for a special parade. There were thirteen hundred of them, but more than half as many again had passed through the ranks and were now serving as subalterns in almost every Battalion of the New Army. They had recently reached the remarkable total of two thousand commissions, and it was to mark this achievement that Colonel Errington invited their honorary colonel, Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood, VC, to inspect the battalion. The Field Marshal had set 18 June as a suitable date, not merely because it was Waterloo Day but because it was a date he had particular reason to remember, ‘For,’ as he explained in his letter of acceptance, ‘I got a big hole in me that day sixty years ago.’

Sir Evelyn Wood was eighty years old, he had got ‘a big hole’ at the siege of Sebastapol in 1855, and to the men in the callow ranks of the Inns of Court he was a historic figure. He had been in the Ashanti wars, had won the Victoria Cross in the Indian Mutiny, risen to be Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Army and had retired a mere twelve years earlier with the rank of Field Marshal. He took the keenest interest in the Army although, to his bitter regret, he was considered to be too old to serve in the present war. But on Waterloo Day the Field Marshal was in his element. He insisted on taking the salute mounted, stopped frequently during his inspection to speak with gruff good humour to numerous soldiers, and later cantered round the field, as the Colonel remarked admiringly, ‘as if the day had been really sixty years ago!’ He addressed the troops in the most complimentary terms, and if his speech was a little rambling as he recalled his own bygone days of soldiering, and if his voice cracked at times and did not quite carry to every corner of the field, the Inns of Court were delighted and rewarded him with three hearty cheers.

There were other Waterloo Day parades and celebrations in various parts of the country, and especially in schools, but the centenary was not celebrated as it might have been in peacetime. It passed virtually unnoticed at the front, but on the same day, by coincidence, a shell exploding near Essex Farm on the Pilkem Ridge uncovered an ancient cannon-ball, buried since Marlborough’s wars. The following evening the 4th Gordon Highlanders were relieved and U Company thankfully handed over the trenches in Y Wood and went back to rest. There were many faces missing on the march back to the fields round Brandhoek and they only got there in the small hours of the morning, dog tired, but extremely happy. Their glorious rest was to last for almost four weeks.

Their casualties, though bad enough, had been less severe than those of the battalions in the forefront of the attack, but their 8th Brigade had held the trenches on the Menin Road for the best part of four weeks, and Colonel Tommy Ogilvie intended that his Battalion’s rest should be a good one. Muscles were soft from lack of exercise and the Army decreed that when men were relieved from the front there should be a stiff programme of training and exercise to toughen them up for going back again. Captain Hopkinson, who now commanded U Company, interpreted this order in liberal terms and the platoon commanders taking their cue from him were determined that the men should enjoy themselves so long as the fine weather lasted.

Sgt. A. Rule.

We were camped in hessian bivouacs and we enjoyed a spell of almost unbroken sunshine and glorious summer mornings. The term ‘early morning parade’ was broadly accepted by our Platoon Commander as embracing gentle strolls past promising field crops, and physical exercises in the morning sunshine, just strenuous enough to stimulate our digestive juices. Training took place after breakfast and our Platoon Commander had taken a university course in agriculture so perhaps for that reason he had an eye for a well-sheltered training field. Through pastures green he led us where, instead of wearisome drill, we could enjoy a private sun bathe and a siesta. Unfortunately,