TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

might get a chance to call my soul my own, I thought,
as I went down the hill to my first parade. If only
they don't chivvy us about too much, I added.... It
was not unlike the first day of a public school term,
and my form-master (we were divided into classes of
twenty-eight) was a youngish Major in the Oxford
and Bucks Light Infantry. He was an even-tempered
man, pleasant to obey, and specially likeable through
a certain shyness of manner. I cannot remember that
any of us caused him any annoyance, though he more
than once asked me to try and be less absent-minded.
Later in the year he was commanding a battalion,
and I don't doubt that he did it excellently.

Every afternoon at half-past five the School assem-
bled to listen to a lecture. Eyeing an audience of
about 300 officers and N.C.O.s, I improved my
knowledge of regimental badges, which seemed some-
how to affect the personality of the wearer. A lion, a
lamb, a dragon or an antelope, a crown, a harp, a
tiger or a sphinx, these devices differentiated men in
more ways than one. But the regimental names were
probably the potent factor, and my meditations while
waiting for the lecturer would lead me along pleasant
associative lanes connected with the English counties
—the difference between Durham and Devon for in-
stance. There was food for thought also in the fact of
sitting between a Connaught Ranger and a Seaforth
Highlander, though both were likely to have been
born in Middlesex. Queer, too, was the whole scene
in that schoolroom, containing as it did a splendid
sample of the Fourth Army which began the Somme
Battle a couple of months afterwards. It was one of