1871-3
Writing on the day following his return, his sister gives Stephen a rchauffé of the traveller's tales:
"Metz is not injured in the least, but is full of soldiers, and that is why there was no place to sleep in there. When Willie left, the shops were open and provisions coming in. Willie travelled with another Englishman in a waggon with a poor starved horse, and was going about in this way for four or five days. The cold intense; deep snow. He saw 25,000 prisoners going into Germany, packed in trucks, forty officers and men in a truck like cattle, and snow among them. He slept in a hospital three nights, 1,700 men in it.
"I do not think, from what he says, that travelling is over safe—that is, on the French side. The sentries are very sharp; an Englishman who was foolishly travelling by himself, and at night, and could speak no language well, was shot a month ago.
"Willie is glad he went; he met an old gentleman who knew grandpapa at Saarbruck."
It is much to be regretted that the daily impressions of this tour were not recorded with the accuracy of the Kashmir trip, but 1867 seems to have been the only year in which he kept a journal. We hear nothing of how he contrived to get anything to eat, or to get about at all, in a region stripped of supplies by the armies that had passed through; but the interesting fact remains that he did visit this ground, and reappeared at home on Thursday, November 17.
Colonel Henry Kent was very popular in the 77th regiment, which he had first joined in 1845. He held the command for twelve years, and had brought the battalion into a very high state of efficiency when he resigned in 1880. It is notified in General Orders of that year that for the third time in succession the 77th was the best shooting regiment, and that Private H. Morgan, of this corps, was the best shot in the army.
Staff College
In February 1873 Captain Gatacre was admitted to the Staff College. He had worked hard to prepare himself for the entrance examination, had taken private lessons to rub up his mathematics, and had been abroad to polish his French; for not only had he to secure a vacancy in open competition, but he had to dispute the place with another officer in the same corps.