The suburban trains were running into Paris with women, and men unfit for service or over military age, much as though business was going on as usual, but we were hardly beyond the outskirts before we were passing through ground which we were told the Germans had held a few weeks before, and the impression gathered was very different from any which could be derived within fifteen miles of London.
Beyond Paris we passed through some beautiful, thickly wooded country, and were told we were within thirty kilometres of the enemy. At one point we halted by a field-ambulance station. Here the wounded were brought down from behind the firing-line in motor ambulances, their wounds dressed, and then put on to a train. It was a stern first sight of war, that long barn strewn with straw and packed with groaning, blood-stained, muddy men straight from the trenches.
II. RAILHEAD AND BEYOND
For the last stage of the journey the train crawled very slowly. Very faintly in the distance we could hear the boom of guns. We looked at one another, Mulligan and I and the two lads from Sandhurst.
"We're getting into it now," said one of the Sandhurst boys.
"Yes—maybe this time twenty-four hours we shall be dead," said Mulligan with a grin.
In those days it did indeed happen that an officer only survived one day after reaching railhead. Some had been killed literally on their way to the trenches. However, Mulligan's cheery attitude of fatalism, combined with the sound of the guns, did not infect me with any wild good spirits, and I pulled out my pipe and filled it for the fifth time since lunch.
The four of us had been living for three days in the first-class carriage ever since we had entrained with our respective drafts at the base. We had slept, eaten, smoked, and made ourselves as comfortable as space would permit, and had also become very good friends. They were splendid boys, the two cadets from Sandhurst—one eighteen, the other nineteen. Theirs had been a short interval between the schoolboy and the man. A month after leaving the Royal Military College they had found themselves responsible officers sent out with a draft to their regiment in France. It had been instructive to watch the perfect self-possession of the boys and the way they handled their men. Now as we neared our journey's end they sat calmly looking out of the window, their ears pricked to catch the sound of the distant guns, liking the thought of war perhaps no more than others do when they find themselves very near to it, but perfectly self-possessed and prepared to do whatever was required of them. They have both given their lives for their country now, poor lads—such bits of life as they had to give, having passed through only two stages of it, and never known "the lover" or the full strength of man.
At railhead the train stopped about half a mile outside the station. The railway transport officer came down the line to give us our instructions. He said he proposed to leave us in a siding for the night and we could have the train to ourselves, which would be better than turning out in a field to sleep. The men could light fires by the railway line for cooking, but they must not drink the water from a stream which ran alongside the line as it was unsafe. There were two wells from which water could be drawn for the troops a little way beyond a level-crossing further up the line. If each draft would send water-carrying parties they should be directed to the wells. He wished a guard put at the level-crossing to prevent any man walking up the line into the town. He was with us about four minutes giving his orders concisely, and so that they could be clearly understood; then he went back towards the station to attend to the multitude of duties which fall to the lot of a railway transport officer. He spoke without flurry or excitement and gave the impression, which every staff-officer should give, of being a thoroughly capable man who knew exactly what he wanted the troops he was handling to do.
When the R.T.O. had gone we went along the line to carry out the orders we had received. Having been explicitly told that the stream was poisoned and not fit to drink, and that all fires must be lit on the right side of the line and not on the left, some of the men proceeded to light fires on the wrong side of the railway and to fill their bottles from the stream. Having put these matters right by standing about and yelling at the offenders, and things having been put more or less in shape for the night, Mulligan and I went off into the town.