“There has been a good deal of scrapping around Ypres lately—­that given away by the communiques; but for reasons which both the Censor and yourself will appreciate, I can’t be more explicit as to locality.  Enough to say that somewhere in this region—­or sector, as we call it nowadays—­there was a certain bit of ground that had been taken and retaken over and over again.  B.’s Regiment was in this fighting, and at one particular time we were holding a German front trench section.  A short distance further on the enemy held a little farm building, forming a sort of redoubt.  They sniped all day long.  They also had a machine gun.  I can’t give you accurate details, for I can only tell you what I’ve heard; but the essentials are true.  Well, we got that farmhouse.  We got it single-handed.  Boyce put up the most amazing bluff that has ever happened in this war.  He crawls out by himself, without anybody knowing—­it was a pitch-black night—­gets through the barbed wire, heaven knows how, up to the house; lays a sentry out with his life-preserver; gives a few commands to an imaginary company; and summons the occupants—­two officers and fifteen men—­to surrender.  Thinking they are surrounded, they obey like lambs, come out unarmed, with their hands up, officers and all, and are comfortably marched off in the dark, as prisoners into our trenches.  They say that when the German officers discovered how they had been done, they foamed so hard that we had to use empty sandbags as strait waistcoats.

“Now, it’s picturesque, of course, and being picturesque, it has flown from mouth to mouth.  But it’s true.  Verb. sap.

“Hoping some time or other to see you again,
“Yours sincerely,
“R.  Dacre,
“Lt.  Col.”

I quote this letter here for the sake of chronological sequence.  It gave me a curious bit of news.  No man could have performed such a feat without a cold brain, soundly beating heart, and nerves of steel.  It was not an act of red-hot heroism.  It was done in cold blood, a deliberate gamble with death on a thousand to one chance.  It was staggeringly brave.

I told the story to Mrs. Boyce.  Her comment was characteristic: 

“But surely they would have to surrender if called upon by a British Officer.”

To the Day of Judgment I don’t think she will understand what Leonard did.  Leonard himself, coming home slightly wounded two or three weeks afterwards, pooh-poohed the story as one of no account and only further confused the dear lady’s ill-conceived notions.

In the meanwhile life at Wellingsford flowed uneventfully.  Now and again a regiment or a brigade, having finished its training, disappeared in a night, and the next day fresh troops arrived to fill its place.  And this great, silent movement of men went on all over the country.  Sometimes our hearts sank.  A reserve Howitzer Territorial Brigade turned up in Wellings Park with dummy wooden guns.  The officers told us that they had been expecting proper guns daily for the past two months.  Marigold shook a sad head.  But all things, even six-inch howitzers, come to him who waits.