CHAPTER VII
COMING AND GOING
The camp in which I lived was the first in the series of camps which stretched along the whole winding valley. We were nearest to the entrance gates, at which military police were perpetually on guard; nearest to the railway station, a wayside halte where few trains stopped; nearest to the road along which the trams ran into the town. All who came and went in and out passed by our camp, using a road, made, I think, by our men originally, which ran along the bottom of our parade ground and thence, with many side roads branching from it, through all the camps right along the valley. Our parade ground sloped down towards this road, ending in a steep bank which we tried to keep pleasantly grassy, which we crowned with flower-beds, so that new-comers might feel that they had arrived at a pleasant place.
Standing on this bank it was possible to watch all the entering and departing traffic of the camps, the motor lorries which rumbled by, the little road engines, always somewhat comic, which puffed and snorted, dragging trucks after them. Now and then came the motors of generals and other potentates, or the shabby, overworked Fords of the Y.M.C.A. Mounted officers, colonels, and camp commandants who were privileged to keep horses, trotted by. Orderlies on bicycles went perilously, for the road was narrow and motor lorries are big. A constant stream of officers and men passed by; or parties, on their way up the hill, to one of the instruction camps marched along.
This went on all day from early dawn till the “Last Post” sounded and quiet came. To a new-comer, as I was, one unused to armies and their ways, this traffic was a source of endless interest; but I liked most to stand on the bank above the road during the later hours of the forenoon. It was then that the new drafts, men fresh from England, marched in.
The transports which brought them reached the harbour early in the morning. The men disembarked at 8 a.m. and marched out to the camps, a distance of four or five miles. They were often weary when they arrived, wet and muddy perhaps, or powdered with dust, unshaved, unwashed. Often their faces were still pallid after a long night of seasickness. Their rifles and kit seemed a burden to some of them. They marched past our camp, and there were generally two or three of us who stood on the bank to watch and criticise.
Later on, when some of the camps had dealt with the music question, a band or a couple of pipers would go some distance along the road to meet the coming men and to play them into camp. Then, in spite of weariness and the effects of seasickness, the new drafts stepped out bravely and made a good show.
I had a friend, a sergeant who had seen much service, one of those N.C.O.’s of the old army to whom the empire owes a debt which will never be properly understood. He often stood beside me to watch the new men come in. He taught me to criticise their marching, to appreciate their bearing. He wore a South African ribbon then. He wears the Mons ribbon now and a couple of gold wound stripes and doubtless several chevrons, red and blue.
The skirl of pipes came to us, and a moment later the quick, firm tread of men marching.