With my regiment

WITH MY REGIMENT
FROM THE AISNE TO LA BASSÉE
PLATOON COMMANDER
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
London: William Heinemann, 1915
TO PAT
Who was killed in front of La Bassée on October 21, 1914, this book is affectionately dedicated by the author
The author desires to thank the Editors of The English Review, The Evening Standard, and The Westminster Gazette for kind permission to reproduce in this volume, articles which appeared in their various columns .
Report yourself to O.C. 1st Battalion at —— immediately.—Group.
So the time had come. Of course I guessed what was going to be in the wire before I opened it, but somehow the pink telegraph envelope, and that little word Group at the end of the message, shook me out of an exciting day-dream into reality. For years we had been brought up on the word Group, which was to come at the end of the order for mobilization. Now it was being flashed over wires all over the country. Our training was to bear fruit. The happy, careless—some people say, rather useless—life of the army officer in peace time was over. The country had gone to war.
I was staying at the time in a large house by the banks of the Thames. My hostess was a mother of soldiers. She took the news calmly, as a mother of soldiers should; said good-bye to her eldest boy, who was to go with the first troops that left England, arranged for the outfit of her two second sons, and sent for her baby from Eton, whom she saw dispatched to the Royal Military College. It was a great house to be in on the outbreak of war—a house whose sons to the third and fourth generation had built up the British Empire, and which, now, when the Empire was called upon to fight for its life, stood firm and undismayed.