"All in," he reports to the R.T.O., and turns for a final shake of the hand.
"Well, good-bye, and good luck" (always that phrase); "wish I was coming with you."
The R.T.O. gives the signal and looks wistfully for a moment after the train before he clambers across the metals to dispatch another dozen or so units from other sidings.
"Where are we embarking?" asks everyone. Not a soul knows. I don't believe the engine-driver himself knew. He just went gaily forward following the points or stopping for signals.
"Through Winchester! Why, it must be Southampton. Wonder what our port will be the other side?"
Detraining and embarkation at Southampton were carried out under the same admirable conditions of efficiency and speed, and with never a single hitch. It seems little enough to read the sentence in cold print, but the more one thinks about it the more wonderful appears the organisation. Had it been the German War Staff directing movements the affair would have seemed no more than an ordinary episode. But with memories of the South African War, and a hundred everyday incidents constantly revealing muddling, red-tape methods, one can find no words in which to express adequately one's admiration for this astonishing volte-face. One single incident, one of fifty like it, will show to what excellent purpose the Authorities had profited by experience, even in those early days.
An A.S.C. motor transport unit was detailed to embark upon a certain ship. Nearly a day's warning had been given to the O.C. The lorries were driven to the dock-side and were just being got on board. The Embarkation Officer, who was standing quietly by, suddenly informed the C.O. that his ship was not that one but another due to sail from another dock some distance away.
The C.O. had barely time in which to get his lorries across, and the ship sailed the moment all was reported clear.
An incident trivial enough, and how un-English it seemed at the time. But after the secret landing of the 9th Army Corps at Suvla, and the subsequent evacuation of Gallipoli, it would appear that we have nothing to learn in the art of ruse.
The weather in those early days of August was perfect: the sea so calm that there was no discomfort even, with the men and horses packed on board like sardines in a tin. If it was a night crossing, the men bedded down in rows out on the decks just as they had filed on board. The transports were of all kinds, from an Atlantic liner to a coasting tramp.