Our uniform—or, if that is too military a word, our academical costume—is officially announced to be "grey-green," the colour of the sea at 7.30 in the morning, when you decide that you have forgotten your towel and had better have a hot bath quietly at home. I don't know how invisible we shall be as soldiers, but anchored off the Maplin Sands we should deceive anybody. Where are the Buoys of the Old Brigade? Ah, where indeed! Even as marines we should have our value.
Luckily, we have been practising amphibious warfare for some time. The camp is mostly under water, and when the "Fall-in" is sounded we do it quite easily. The "Emerge" is not so easily obeyed. But there were drier days in December, and on one of these I made a curious discovery.
We were having a field-day, and my side of the battle was advancing in sections under shell-fire over fairly flat country. Every now and then, however, we came to a small hill or group of hills. There seemed to be no human reason for it, and I suggested to my section that we were on the track of some new kind of mole.
"No," said James, "those are bunkers."
We looked at each anxiously and tapped our foreheads.
"It's a golf-course," he persisted.
I could not allow dangerous talk of this kind to go on.
"Silence in the ranks," I said sternly.
A little later, when we were halted, an old, old man, the Nestor of the section, asked if he might speak to me.
"Certainly, my lad," I said.