Various Records, mostly self-explanatory. The Court of Inquiry
mentioned in the bottom left-hand message was to decide whether the
wound of a man in the Public Schools Battalion—a rifle-shot through
his foot—was self-inflicted or accidental. It was self-inflicted. B.
Echelon meant the part of the battalion not in the trenches. Idol was
the code-name for the Second Battalion the Royal Welch Fusiliers. The
notebook leaf is the end of my 1915 diary only three weeks after I
began it; I used my letters home as a diary after that. The message
about Sergeant Varcoe was from Captain Samson shortly before his death;
I was temporarily attached to his company 322
1929, The Second Battalion the Royal Welch Fusiliers back to pre-war
soldiering. The regimental Royal goat, the regimental goat-major and
the regimental pioneers (wearing white leather aprons and gauntlets—a
special regimental privilege) on church parade at Wiesbaden on the
Rhine. The band follows, regimentally. The goat has a regimental number
and draws rations like a private soldier. ‘Some speak of Alexander, and
some of Hercules....’ _To face page_ 364