  “. . . . and Brigades of the —— English division came down, fresh from those quagmires in front of Passchaendael. Officers and men, they were in the last stage of exhaustion—in that condition where every forward step is a battleground on which the desire not to take it has to be met and conquered before that step is taken. They had foot slogged it all the way from C——. W——., and had only stayed there an hour—they looked what they were, men really dead but that their hearts would not let them lie down and die . . . . They spoke with that level exhausted voice of overdone men—if they spoke at all . . . . The little subaltern to whom we told the distance to S——, groaned aloud—but refused the drink we offered—I think it was that he would not allow himself in their extremity something the men could not get . . . . It was a division against which Luck had set its face. Fortune has her favourites among the divisions, and others she pursues with the vindictiveness of an evil step-mother. Every ill circumstance contrivable by collusion between the weather, the enemy, and something we will call Mischance seems to lay in wait for the Brigades upon which the disfavour of Fate has fallen. Poor ——, it was one of them, unlucky on going in, unlucky while in, and unlucky on coming out. . . .” Transcriber’s Note: The only known changes made to the original publication are as follows:
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