But the journey was soon over. A little after midnight, on the 17th of December, the Regiment arrived at a siding near their camp: “It was bitterly cold, with a white frost and icy wind, and we had to turn out, detrain, and load up all our kit, saddles, and arms on to motor lorries, and then march, leading our horses six miles out to our camp here in pitch darkness.... We left the station about 2.45 A.M., and reached camp about 5 A.M., and groped about till we somehow got our lines down.” It was not a pleasant beginning to their soldiering in France, a curious contrast to the heat of the Red Sea—“the worst and coldest camp, I think, I have ever seen, about six inches deep in liquid mud, on the top of an exposed hill, with a bitter wind blowing. We are in tents, V.[10] and I sharing an 80-lb. one. We are very warm and comfortable, lots of warm straw on the ground, and our valises on top of it, and the men are in tents too, but the poor unfortunate horses are having a terrible time.... They stand always in a bog. The watering-place, about three-quarters of a mile away, is literally up to your knees nearly in liquid mud.” Lance-Corporal Bowie’s diary says of the arrival at Orleans: “Here we detrained at once in the midst of a terrific hailstorm, afterwards saddling up and leading our horses through the city to the village of La-Source, a distance of nine miles. Our stay at this camp proved to be a very severe test for both men and horses, as we were still clothed in our Indian khaki; at the same time it rained heavily for hours, and was also bitterly cold. The place in which the rough water-troughs had been fitted up, being in a valley, became practically a sea of mud, in places reaching up to our horses’ bellies.”

At this camp the Regiment found some more of their officers awaiting them, which brought them up to full strength again.

After two or three days they moved to a slightly more sheltered place, and the weather began to change. By Christmas Day it was bitterly cold, but bright and still, with a warm sun, and all was going better. Plenty of warm clothing was being served out to the men, and it was possible to get exercise again; and the food was excellent, good meat and vegetables, and tobacco. The warm clothing indeed was more than the men and horses could carry, and the quantity of blankets and other things had to be reduced to a more reasonable and serviceable scale. To quote Lance-Corporal Bowie again: “On Christmas Day 1914, every one received a post-card photo of the King and Queen, and also a gift from Princess Mary, which consisted of a pipe and an embossed brass box containing tobacco and cigarettes. A majority of us also received a Christmas parcel, which we owed to the generosity of the ladies connected with the Regiment, at the same time being completely overloaded with warm underwear, woollen cardigans, waistcoats, mittens, &c. But the waste of our new kits which we were compelled to obtain before leaving India was disgraceful, almost everything being burnt with the exception of some which we had dumped at Marseilles, which, needless to say, we never saw again. On the morning of the 31st of December we were all very glad to march out of this muddy camp, an incident worthy of note being that the men were so overloaded with kit (many of them having on two of almost everything as regards underclothing, having nowhere else to carry it), that they found it an awful struggle to mount, feeling more like a well-dressed Christmas-tree than a cavalryman. However, having all got mounted, we marched direct to Orleans Station, where we at once entrained for Berguette (Pas-de-Calais), where we arrived at 3 A.M. on 1st January 1915. Detraining here, we marched up to a village called Enquin-les-Mines, a distance of some kilometres, where we were allotted billets which consisted of old barns, &c., for the men, whilst we made our horses comfortable under archways, &c.”

Major T. Ha. S. Marchant, D.S.O. Col. A. Symons, C.M.G.
Major W. A. Kennard, D.S.O.
(Died of pneumonia, December 1918, at Etaples)
Bt. Col. W. Pepys, D.S.O. Lieut.-Col. E. F. Twist
(Wounded at Lajj, 5th March 1917)

Certainly the British soldier in this war was equipped and fed as he had never been before, and the Thirteenth ended the year very happily on the whole. It was a contrast to their winter in the Crimea sixty years earlier.

Christmas good wishes and photographs from the King and Queen and Princess Mary came to assure them that they were not forgotten in England. And if the prayer of Their Majesties, “May God protect you and bring you home safe!” was not to be fulfilled for all of them, they faced what was to come with confidence and eagerness, longing only for more stirring work, and a chance of doing their share of honourable service.

It was a pause in the fighting then. The great retreat on Paris and the battle of the Marne were over, and the baffled enemy had made his first attempt to strike out to the westward for the Channel ports. He had been stopped after desperate fighting by the wasted regiments of our little army, and the troops on both sides were settling down into the long trench warfare of the next four years. The British part of the line was woefully short of men, and guns and munitions of all kinds; and to those who knew the real state of affairs the outlook was very dark, for in England there were no trained reserves to send to the Front—plenty of brave men, but no soldiers. Happily the country did not know in what peril its army was, and contingents were coming from India and Canada and Australia and New Zealand, and the confidence of the men at the Front was unfailing, and all hoped that the worst was over. It seems wonderful now that such confidence should have prevailed at the Front, and so little real anxiety in England; but the fighting men were full of the belief that they were man for man so superior to the enemy that he could never break through. Such gloomy faces as there were could be found only in England, not among the fighting men. In spite of snow and mud and suffering of all kinds, there was no gloom with them.

Bt. Lieut-Col. E. J. Carter Major R. F. Cox Capt. Lord Huntingfield
Capt. Norman Neill
Brig.-Major, 7th British Cavalry Brigade
(Killed at Zwarteleen, 6th November 1914)
Bt. Major R. S. Hamilton-Grace
G.S.O. 2nd Hdqrs. Cav. Corps
(Killed in Motor accident at Burgues,
4th August 1915)		 Capt. F. C. Covell Bt. Major H. Ll. Jones, D.S.O.
(Wounded in France with 4th Dragoon
Guards, 28th October 1914)

CHAPTER VII.
1915 IN FRANCE.

The Regiment was now at full strength, officers and men and horses, and keen for a share in the fighting. The horses had suffered to some extent from the change of climate in the past six weeks, but only required a little rest and feeding-up. The men seemed fit and ready for anything.