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The first English Army, "the Old Contemptibles," had all been expert rifle-shots, and, after a period when rifle fire was almost entirely absent from the battle-fields, tacticians began to recall this fact, and the cost it had entailed upon the Germans.

No one officially said where the B. E. F. was stationed, but everyone knew: on France's low-lying Belgian border from Lille to Hirson, right where the "Old Contemptibles" took their stand 25 years ago.

Thus with proud self-derision the Old Contemptibles* of 1914 sang as they marched to battle.

They were ill-trained and vitiated by appeasement when war came, not unlike the "Old Contemptibles" which the Kaiser scorned in 1914.

But the Old Contemptibles stood their ground until their ranks were shot through & through.