They are like our Cavalry in that their horses are in high
condition, and they talk hopefully of getting past the barbed
wire one of these days and coming into their own. Meantime,
they are employed on "various work as requisite," and they all
sympathize with our rough-rider of Dragoons who flatly refused
to take off his spurs in the trenches. If he had to die as a
damned infantryman, he wasn't going to be buried as such. A
troop-horse of a flanking squadron decided that he had had
enough of war, and jibbed like Lot's wife. His rider (we all
watched him) ranged about till he found a stick, which he
used, but without effect. Then he got off and led the horse,
which was evidently what the brute wanted, for when the man
remounted the jibbing began again. The last we saw of him was
one immensely lonely figure leading one bad but happy horse
across an absolutely empty world. Think of his reception--the
sole man of 40,000 who had fallen out!
THE BOCHE AS MR. SMITH
The Commander of that Army Corps came up to salute. The cars
went away with the Generals and the Minister for War; the Army
passed out of sight over the ridges to the north; the peasant
women stooped again to their work in the fields, and wet mist
shut down on all the plain; but one tingled with the
electricity that had passed.
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