So, in order to free the others for harder training this company provided very nearly all the fatigue parties for the camp.
Still, this didn't matter. It just gave the budding officers a chance to show what they were capable of. On several occasions a member of "E" Company proved he was more than a little useful with his hands when it came to a matter of treating things from a physical point of view and cutting the cheap wit out. The fatigues were also done without a murmur, that was another point of honour, and although the available strength of the company was dwindling day by day, "grousing" about extra work was conspicuous by its absence.
There was a funny side about this dwindling of the strength, too. Men would be on the morning parade, and not on that later in the day. The explanation was a simple one. Their papers had come through. A man would walk out through the gates and be pulled up by the sentry.
"What about your pass?" the latter would ask.
"Got my discharge," would be the reply.
"Got a commission?"
"Yes."
"Good luck, old chap. I'm getting my papers to-morrow."
So, many of the original members of the First Sportsman's Battalion were scattered about on every front in their various regiments. Walking through the Rue Colmar, Suez, one day I met my old company officer, then in the Royal Flying Corps. At Sidi Bishr, on the banks of the Mediterranean, I met another. A fellow-sergeant in the Battalion came up in the Rue Rosetta, Alexandria, and claimed me.
Out beyond the Bitter Lakes, east of the Suez Canal, I met an old Sportsman who had been a fellow-corporal with me. Back of the Somme, a prominent West Country Sportsman shouted a greeting to me from the Artillery. He still remembered rousing the camp at Hornchurch one night by sounding a hunting horn.