Their language was mild compared with that of some of our young officers. I remember one I met near Henin. He was one of a group of three, all gunner officers who were looking about for better gun positions not so clearly visible to the enemy, who was in two little woods⁠—the Bois de Sart and Bois Vert⁠—which stared down upon them like green eyes. Some of their guns had been destroyed, many of their horses killed; some of their men. A few minutes before our meeting a shell had crashed into a bath close to their hut, where men were washing themselves. The explosion filled the bath with blood and bits of flesh. The younger officer stared at me under the tilt forward of his steel hat and said, “Hullo, Gibbs!” I had played chess with him at Groom’s Café in Fleet Street in days before the war. I went back to his hut and had tea with him, close to that bath, hoping that we should not be cut up with the cake. There were noises “off,” as they say in stage directions, which were enormously disconcerting to one’s peace of mind, and not very far off. I had heard before some hard words about our generalship and staff-work, but never anything so passionate, so violent, as from that gunner officer.