WITH THE DRAFT
On returning to our barracks we found notices that "the following
officers will hold themselves in readiness to proceed to their
respective units with the next draft." Eagerly we scanned the list to
make sure our names had not been omitted, and then transferred ourselves
from the crowd that gathered in the ante-room to those who waited their
turn outside the telephone cabinet. Letters and telegrams were being
feverishly written in all parts of the building, and a hurly-burly of
voices in the mess-room proclaimed the general opinion that we had been
pretty badly cut up. A tailor's agent had somehow made his way into that
sanctuary, and voices were demanding "Who can lend me a blank cheque?"
in a wild endeavour to get him out again.
Telegrams were also arriving, one or two from the front. A subaltern
spread the sheet of flimsy in his hand to find his cousin had been
killed in action. There was a sudden hush in the turmoil as he turned
and walked slowly to the window; men at such times are mute and trust to
the simple pressure of the hand to tell that sympathy which the tongue
cannot frame.
A colonel whose hair had grown grey in the service passed from one group
to another, giving a word of advice here and receiving a word of
sympathy there, for his age had debarred any further activities in the
field. "But I have one son over there now," he proudly told you, "and my
other is coming with the next contingent!"
The orderly room clerk entered and pinned up the daily orders. These
were at once surrounded, and would have perished in the _melee_ had the
colonel not taken the situation in hand and read them out in his
sternest parade voice with appropriate comments of his own.
"All officers and men warned for draft will parade to the ranges at 5
o'clock tomorrow morning--that will teach you to sit up all night
playing cards!
"Markers and other details--that includes you, Lyte--will be at the
butts and all targets ready for firing at a quarter before the hour,
&c., &c.
"Light marching order will be worn by all ranks, including one hundred
and fifty rounds per man. Haversack rations to be carried.
"Officers' valises--maximum weight thirty-five pounds--to be rolled
ready for transport by 2 p.m., &c., &c."
This last caused an immediate thinning of the crowd, and till late that
night we struggled over our kits, rolling and unrolling them to try and
bring their weight down to something like the regulation amount.
At 4 o'clock next morning we fell in to march to the ranges, Lyte and
his ill-fated companions having left half an hour before, and from then
on till the afternoon we toiled in the hot sun. Returning about 3 that
afternoon, we found the draft ordered to be ready to proceed at 6
o'clock, barely time for the men to get their tea; and tea in the Army
is a meagre meal at the best of times.
Then after some hours waiting on the barrack square the draft moved off
down the Cheriton road and through the streets of Folkestone to where
the transports lay awaiting us.
Here the British Navy took hold of us again, and there were no further
delays. The men were led below decks and packed as close as they could
stand to one another, the officers having the privilege of being able to
sit on their valises, which were piled unceremoniously on the deck.
Then when all were accounted for the mooring ropes were cast off, and
with no more ceremony than the tinkle of the ship's telegraph we slid
out of the harbour under cover of the scudding clouds.
But we were not alone. A long, lithe shape, strangely suggestive of a
greyhound, crept out of the darkness around us and came up alongside,
and a brief conversation, ending in "All right, full speed," was held.
The telegraph tinkled again and our ship bounded forward, leaving a long
trail of phosphorescent foam in her wake.
The sighing of the rigging in the wind, the slap-slap of the Channel
breakers at our sides, and the lashing "hish" of the spray across the
decks blended with, but did not break, our thoughts.
And the dark shapes of the destroyers and the other transports
momentarily revealed by gaps in the scudding clouds, the gleaming wake
of the ship, and the faint white of the life-belts, that showed dimly
where little groups of two or three stood or sat together, made a
fitting scene for such an orchestral accompaniment.
Thus we reached France.
There followed a long march through the darkened streets of Boulogne to
a camp on the Plains of St. Martin, not far from the tall column that
marks where Napoleon gathered his great army and waited for the time
that never came, when he would be master of that little strip of water
we had just crossed.
A drizzling rain had started, and the men had now been nearly eight
hours without food and practically a whole day without a proper meal. We
were able to draw bully beef and biscuit at once from the stores, but
the situation was really saved by the ladies at the Y.M.C.A. tent, who
supplied hot cocoa and cake to all who cared to apply. A nominal charge
of one penny was made to those who wished to pay, but no man was refused
because of his inability to find this sum, small as it was.
Only a small thing, you may think, but it is only the smallest part of
what this wonderful organisation is doing for the soldier at the front.
And a smile and a cup of coffee at 5 o'clock in the morning "look pretty
good to me," as one recipient expressed it.
We were held in camp all the following day and then, carrying two days'
rations, we entrained for the north. For a while we made vain attempts
to find our destination from the French railway staff, but concluded
they either did not understand our variation of their beautiful language
or were sullen brutes knowing nothing.
As we continued northward the throbbing of distant gunfire became
plainer, and a strange flickering could be seen in the morning sky. This
strange light, caused by the flash of the guns and the flares or
illuminating fuzees shot up by the infantry, resembled nothing so much
as our own Aurora Borealis, and we were not surprised to find, a little
later, that our men had already nicknamed them the "Northern Lights."
Dawn brought us to a halt by some little town where the engine-driver
proceeded leisurely to fill his boiler. We availed ourselves of the
chance to exercise our French on some Algerian troops who were lying
wounded all over the platform. A rough tent had been made with waggon
tarpaulins, and under this lay the worst cases--ghastly wrecks of men
with blood-soaked bandages and blood-encrusted clothing, face muscles
twitching convulsively as masses of flies settled on them. One French
medical orderly with a strip of silver on his sleeves and an assistant
seemed to be the whole staff of the place.
One tall chap with a handsome beard showed us how a bullet had torn
through his cap and grazed his head, while a rude sling and a crutch
spoke of a more serious injury of which he said nothing. His white teeth
and smiling face turned to a horrible scowl as he continued talking, and
thinking we were over-exciting him, we moved away. Had we only known, he
was trying to describe to us the terrible effect of the asphyxiating gas
on his comrades who were less educated than he!
A few miles further on we detrained at Poperinghe and were soon marching
along a beautiful avenue of poplars--now perhaps the most famous highway
in Flanders, the Vlamertinghe road.
Refugees passed us with all their worldly effects piled on a waggon, the
women and little children clattering along behind in their wooden
sabots. It seemed so unnecessary. The guns that had been pounding away
all night were now strangely silent, and the fields on either side
seemed peaceful enough. There was even a farmer plowing stoically in
one.
A little further on we saw a horse that had been hurriedly cut out from
a gun or waggon team. It needed but one glance to tell us that shrapnel
had done its deadly work there, and we wondered vaguely what had become
of its rider, for the saddlery and harness were still on it.
On entering Vlamertinghe we saw signs of shelling on most of the
buildings, particularly around the church and the square, the steeple of
the former forming, of course, the aiming mark for the German guns.
Here, too, the body of a woman lay half in and half out of a doorway.
The place seemed absolutely deserted. An aeroplane droned overhead, but
whether our own or the enemy's we could not ascertain. However, we took
no chances and marched on, hugging the shelter of the walls on either
side of the street.
In this formation we were met by the gaunt figure of old Joey ----, our
quarter-master. He fell in beside Major V---- and guided us to our
transport lines, a farm a little on the Ypres side of the town. Here we
lay for half an hour munching biscuits and bully beef and watching an
anti-aircraft gun shelling the aeroplane we had noticed before, which
was now low enough to distinguish the sinister black crosses painted on
its wings.
This was the reason for the extraordinary silence on the part of the
guns, so skilfully hidden all around us.
The "Archibalds," as the anti-aircraft guns are popularly known, seemed
to be making extraordinarily bad practice as the fleecy puffs of
shrapnel burst all around the plane without apparent effect, and the
machine, having spotted something, dropped a signal that burst into
brilliant sparkles and turned for the enemy lines.
At this moment Joey returned from the outhouse concealing the
telephonists with instructions that we were to proceed to the field,
where the battalion was dug in at once.