GETTING READY TO GO
My second leave arrived. Being issued with a new uniform, my buttons
and badges burnished as bright as elbow grease and metal paste could
make them, I flattered myself I made a most soldierly figure as I
stepped out with the rest, en route for Amesbury station. The major,
knowing his boys, gave us a word of warning. He held forth on the
nearness of the time when we would be wanted to hold the thin line
over the channel. The warning was a hint to be back on time or
results unpleasant would follow. This did not prevent me taking an
extra day or so.
This was to be the last I saw of my people before embarking on the
final stage of the game and the time passed all too quickly. On the
day of my final leave-taking not one shadow of sorrow was portrayed
on mother's face. On the contrary, she resorted to an old English
custom that has been handed down for generations: after my last kiss
and embrace she waved a cheery adieu and grabbing an old shoe that
she had prepared for the moment she flung it after me with the time
immemorial expression, "Good Luck and God-speed."
I held the tears back until I was well out of sight and then my
pent-up feelings gave way and I let them freely flow. The memory of
that farewell has supported me and given me strength to undergo what
sometimes seems impossible when I look back over it all. My youngest
sister, Edith, displayed the same bravery of spirit and maintained a
brightness and a cheeriness which I well know she was far from
feeling. Blessed indeed are we in our women and girls.
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[Illustration: THE REMAINS OF A ONCE PROSPEROUS VILLAGE]
The frightfulness of modern warfare is shown in this remarkable
picture. The bare sticks were once graceful trees; the heaps of
debris, beautiful homes.
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My return journey was in the company of another of the
British-Canadians from my own village. At London we crammed
ourselves into a carriage crowded with khaki-clad humanity, and a
furious argument arose as to what constituted a real Canadian. Hot
and hotter it grew until we steamed into the little depot, and it was
only settled when a stalwart Canuck volunteered to knock hell out of
any man in the whole damned army who said he wasn't a Canadian.
On arriving at the door of my former hut I found it barred and the
boys inside told me to seek other quarters as the spinal meningitis
had at last reached our abode. I entered the next hut and found it
filled with my chums who had returned from leave, all feeling
somewhat dismal, and we cast ourselves down wherever we could and
dreamt about home till morning.
As before, my low spirits soon faded and I skipped about as usual.
Now began a period of intensive training, chiefly bayonet practice.
Musketry, route marching, bayonet fighting, and target practice all
took up our time, and such games as football and baseball served to
keep the men supple.
On New Year's eve we celebrated and the officers closed their eyes
for awhile, and the men took full advantage of their temporary
blindness. In our hut, story and song floated more or less musically
into the mist outside. The evening finished with a speech from one
huge fellow, which he insisted on making in spite of our protest, and
to emphasize his oratorical points, he seized the object nearest to
him which happened to be me, and taking me by the coat collar and the
leg, he drove home his points by thumping me, rear end downward, on
the table. That was another time in my life when the way of the
small man was hard, and the trouble of it was the table was harder.
Although I suffered somewhat by reason of my short stature, nature
evened things up by giving me a stamina which nothing seemed to hurt.
In consequence, I was always chosen to be one of the party who
paraded before the doctor every few days in order to show the doctor
that there was nothing very seriously wrong with our battalion,
because the men were afraid we would be left behind when the
contingent went to France owing to the amount of sickness in our
bunch.
Policemen, whether civil or military, are ever the abomination of a
liberty loving soldiery and throughout the camp they were always on
the lookout for offenders. However, on Salisbury Plain it was
comparatively easy to avenge oneself on the M.P.'s. (military
police). At night, after "Lights out" these officious guardians of
the peace would be on the look-out for any of the boys who had stayed
out too long, and who were dodging the sentries. On a stormy night,
with their coat collars turned up to their ears and leaning against
the storm, they would be walking on the chalk walks on each side of
which stretched the sea of mud. The avenger usually prepared his
attack by donning a pair of rubber boots, and stealing up behind the
unsuspecting policeman until within a few feet of him, he would step
off into the mud on the storm side of the M.P. and deliver a blow
with all the pent-up feelings of an aggrieved soldier behind it and
into the mud would topple the unlucky policeman. The Canadian idea
of discipline had not yet become acclimated to the stern routine of
the Imperial Army.