“I'll be goddammed if I have any idea,” I said.

Consuelo was so taken by Freyberg that she presented him with a Jaeger sleeping bag. On their last night of leave at Seymour Street, Flora entertained Eddie Marsh and Rupert Brooke to dinner with Johnny and Freyberg. When they had returned to camp, Johnny wrote to his mother that Freyberg was so pleased with the 'flea bag' that he'd christened it 'Consuelo'.

“Academies do not win the Davis Cup,” Tom Gorman, the Davis Cup captain, said this summer after Boris Becker relegated the United States to Lower Slobbovia, a full year in the American Zone sector.

Most marchers were children, Girl and Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts and Brownies. One Cub Scout pulled his sister in a Radio Flyer decorated with small American flags. A Brownie pushed a baby carriage crammed with a zoo of stuffed animals.