At Reigate, where we had to wait an hour, a bombardier, one of the old hands, begged leave to visit a certain hotel outside the station to buy some bread and cheese.
He was a man who hardly gave the appearance of being bread-and-cheese hungry, if you quite take my meaning, and the glassy stare with which this ancient tried to fix me augured ill for discipline if there were many others in the draft like him. Permission was refused. It was a trivial point gained but it had its consequences.
Portsmouth was reached in some five hours; and twenty minutes' march brought us to the A.S.C. barracks where a hot dinner would cheer us all; for I had remembered to send a telegram en route to tell them to expect us.
We were received with cordiality by a decrepit old store-keeper, and the stables' cat. Otherwise the barracks looked as though an army had lately sacked the place from floor to basement.
The men looked glum, and there was more than a hint of a move to a near-by hotel for "bread and cheese." Well, they were only young reservists and discipline was an almost unknown quantity.
But dinner had to materialise somehow. So, demanding the keys of the castle from the unwilling seneschal, the senior sergeant, the bombardier, the stables' cat and myself started on a tour of inspection.
Good! The kitchen contained a sack of flour and most of a sheep. Apparently the sheep was intended to last the decrepit servitor and his struggling family for the rest of the week. But we paid no heed to tearful entreaties and ruthlessly tore the meat away from their very mouths.
"This is War," said I.
Soon dinner was well on the way, blankets were found for the men, and off I went to report to Headquarters.
H.Q. "received me most politely," as Harry Fragson used to sing, and didn't think they wanted me nor my company for any performance in Portsmouth.