VIII

The Commander-in-Chief⁠—Sir John French⁠—received us when we were first attached to the British armies in the field⁠—a lifetime ago, as it seems to me now. It was a formal ceremony in the château near St. -Omer, which he used as his own headquarters, with his A.D.C. ’s in attendance, though the main general headquarters were in the town. Our first colonel gathered us like a shepherd with his flock, counting us twice over before we passed in. A tall, dark young man, whom I knew afterward to be Sir Philip Sassoon, received us and chatted pleasantly in a French salon with folding-doors which shut off an inner room. There were a few portraits of ladies and gentlemen of France in the days before the Revolution, like those belonging to that old aristocracy which still existed, in poverty and pride, in other châteaus in this French Flanders. There was a bouquet of flowers on the table, giving a sweet scent to the room, and sunlight streamed through the shutters⁠ ⁠… I thought for a moment of the men living in ditches in the salient, under harassing fire by day and night. Their actions and their encounters with death were being arranged, without their knowledge, in this sunny little château.⁠ ⁠…