MOVEMENT ORDERS
We did not stay very long in our new camping ground. For a few days the
men seemed quite content. Everything was new to them; but soon they
began to wonder how long it would be before we would leave. The nights
often were very cold in the tents, for it was now late in October.
We began to feel sure that orders for departing must come soon as no
preparations were being made for going into winter quarters. On Sunday
I had announced confessions for the following Wednesday. On the day
set, four priests came to help me, but just as the men were being
formed up to go to the church, word came that we were to leave that
evening for overseas. The men were dismissed and soon there was a scene
of general disorder; but on all sides were happy faces. All seemed glad
to go. They had been looking forward to it for so long a time.
I was obliged to tell the priests who had come so far that there would
be no confessions. I kept the hosts that the Sisters in a nearby town
had made for me, as I hoped to hear the men’s confessions on the boat
on the way across the ocean.
All night long we stood around, waiting for the train to come to take
us, but there had been some delay, and so it was not till early in the
morning that we left. Our journey was not a very long one, but we were
obliged to wait at many different stations till trains passed us. As
the movement order had called for a night trip, no dining-car or buffet
had been attached. The men went hungry all day. The last trip had been
one of over-indulgence. This was one of abstinence.
We had no breakfast and no dinner, yet the men seemed quite content,
and joked pleasantly over the fact that they were hungry. At one
country station where we were side-tracked the bugler jumped out on the
platform and blew the call: “Come to the cook-house door, boys!” But as
there was no cook-house door to go to, and no “Mulligan battery”--the
name given to the field-kitchen, with its steaming odors of Irish
stew--they greeted the call of the smiling bugler with derisive
laughter.
At four o’clock we were all aboard the _S. S. Corsican_, and at five
we pulled out from the dock, the band on the upper deck playing “Auld
Lang Syne.” Many relatives of the lads, who had arrived in the little
seaport town, waved their good-byes from the dock as the boat swung
clear from its moorings and steamed slowly down the bay. The boys
swarmed up the rope ladders and cheered; many little tugs far down on
the water darted about, shrieking shrilly their farewells. We were off
to the war!