Your
duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So keep constantly
on your guard against any excesses. In this new experience you may
find temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely resist
both temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect
courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.
"Do your duty bravely,
"Fear God,
"Honour the King.
"(Signed), KITCHENER, Field Marshal,"
CHAPTER XXVI
A LUNCHEON AT BRITISH HEADQUARTERS
The same high-crowned roads, with pitfalls of mud at each side; the
same lines of trees; the same coating of ooze, over which the car slid
dangerously. But a new element--khaki.
Khaki everywhere--uniforms, tents, transports, all of the same hue.
Skins, too, where one happens on the Indian troops. It is difficult to
tell where their faces end and their yellow turbans begin.
Except for the slightly rolling landscape and the khaki one might have
been behind the Belgian or French Army. There were as usual aeroplanes
overhead, clouds of shrapnel smoke, and not far away the thunder of
cannonading. After a time even that ceased, for I was on my way to
British General Headquarters, well back from the front.
I carried letters from England to Field Marshal Sir John French, to
Colonel Brinsley Fitzgerald, aid-de-camp to the "Chief," as he is
called, and to General Huguet, the _liaison_ between the French and
English Armies.
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