I, of course, led the Fifth and Sixth, and under me I had Saunders, as general of the Sixth, and Norris, as general of the Fifth. As for the enemy, Pegram was generalissimo, to use his own word, and Rice and Abbott and Mitchell and Blades were his captains. It got jolly interesting just before the battle, and everybody was frightfully keen, and the kids who were not doing orderly and red-cross work, were allowed to stand on a slight hill fifty yards from the sand-pit and watch the struggle.
And on the morning of the great day, happening to meet Rice and Mitchell, I asked them what was the psychical idea behind the attack of the Fourth; and Rice said his psychical idea was to give the Sixth about the worst time it had ever had; and Mitchell said his psychical idea was to make the Sixth wish it had never been born. They meant it, too, for there was a lot of bitter feeling against us, and I realised that we were in for a real battle, though there could only be one end, of course. They had thirty-eight fighters to our thirty-one, and they had rather the best of the weight and size; but in the Sixth we had Forbes and Forrester, both of the first eleven and hard chuckers; and we had three other hard chuckers and first eleven men in the Fifth, besides Williams, who was the champion long-distance cricket ball thrower in the school.
We had all practised a good deal, and also instructed the kids in the art of making snowballs hard and solid. The general feeling with us was that we had the brains and the strategy, while the Fourth had rather the heavier metal, but would not apply it so well as us. When a man fell, the ambulance, in the shape of two red-cross kids, was to conduct him to a place safe from fire in the rear; and when he was being taken from the firing-line, he was not to be fired at, but the battle was to go on, though the red-cross kids were to be respected. I should like to draw a diagram of the field, like the diagrams in the newspapers, but that I cannot do. I can, however, explain that, when the great moment arrived, I manned the top of the sand-pit with my army, and during the half hour of preparation threw up a wall of snow all along the front of the sand-pit nearly three feet high. And along this wall I arranged the Fifth, led by Norris, on the right wing. Five men, commanded by Saunders, specially guarded the incline on the left, which was our weak spot, and the remaining ten men, all from the Sixth, took up a position five yards to the rear and above the front line, in such a position that they could drop curtain fire freely over the Fifth. I, being the Grand Staff, took up a position on the right wing on a small elevation above the army, from which I could see the battle in every particular; and Thwaites, of the Sixth, who was too small and weak to be of any use in the fighting lines, was my adjutant to run messages and take any necessary orders to the wings.