For the next few days we remained at the base camp waiting for orders to go up to the Front. The time was passed in route marching, inspecting arms and equipment, and trying to instil some sense of discipline into the draft. This last duty took some performing, as the draft resented being cooped up in the square acre of camp ground, and showed a disposition individually to go off into the town and get drunk.
One evening, about 7.30, an order came for the drafts for the 5th Division to entrain, and Mulligan and I and our 180 followers marched to the station.
That journey up to the Front was for me a never-to-be-forgotten experience. It lasted for three days, the train creeping along at ten miles an hour. As on the boat, we were a mixed party, comprising drafts for some eight regiments, and totalling about 1500 men. The train was of immense length. The senior officer was an elderly ex-Militia subaltern, completely incompetent. He made no regulations, posted no guards at stations, gave none of the draft officers orders, and by the end of the third day was firing his revolver wildly out of the window. For this I do not blame him much, for the situation had by this time reached a climax. The different drafts remained fairly quiet in their carriages for the first night, but when the next morning broke fine and sunny and we stopped at a station in the middle of a French town, first one man and then another climbed down from the stuffy, crowded carriages on to the platform. From the platform it was only a step into the main street of the town, and this step was quickly taken. When the train wanted to move on there were no drafts. The drafts were all in cafés, cottages, and pie shops, receiving a hearty welcome from the inhabitants. The elderly ex-Militia subaltern said they must be collected and put back in the train, and set off with different draft officers to do this, but as fast as the men were turned out of one shop they went into another lower down the street. Eventually Mulligan organized a drive from the lower end of the town up to the station, the men were collected, and off we started again.
Warned by this experience, the ex-Militia subaltern ordered the driver of the train on no account again to stop near a town. Our next halt was, therefore, well in the middle of open country. Beside the line there ran a peaceful stream. The noonday heat was by now at its height, and after a glance out of the carriage windows we settled to sleep, secure in our remoteness from trouble. Suddenly the ex-Militiaman, putting his head out of the window, exclaimed:
"My God! Look at the ——s."
We looked, and saw several of the draft divesting themselves of their clothes preparing to bathe. We jumped out to order them into the train again, but while we were doing this every carriage was opened and the different drafts, perhaps thinking a bathing parade had been ordered and the officers were going down to superintend, all jumped out and made for the river.
"I should start the train again," said Mulligan, looking coldly on the scene of confusion. "They'll come back quick enough if they think they are going to be left behind."
The order was given, and with a long, warning whistle the train started slowly off. The effect was electrical. The men began to pour back at once. The train was kept going at two miles an hour, and those dressed were quickly on board again. One man, stark naked except for a pair of trousers, was left racing after her down the line holding up his trousers with one hand. He soon took a heavy toss over a switch wire, and the train had to be stopped and a party sent back to fetch him. While this was happening the ex-Militia subaltern in charge, who was keeping an eagle look-out all along the train, spied another man making off. He called to him to stop, but the man apparently did not hear and continued. The distracted subaltern then called on a corporal in the next carriage to fire at the culprit with his rifle, which he did.
The victim, suddenly alive to his position, gave a wild yell when the shot was fired, and ran away as hard as he could. He disappeared into a wood and was never seen again.
Nearing Paris we began to pass hospital trains going west, and outside the city were halted alongside a train-load of German prisoners. They were a miserable, abject-looking lot, huddled together on the floors of the carriages, all in their muddy grey uniforms as they had been captured. I do not think in those days there was much hate in the heart of the British Tommy towards his foe, for our fellows threw them biscuits which they devoured ravenously, and cigarettes which they lit and passed round one to another with trembling hands.