"Well, you're exactly the right sort. I'm mighty glad you're here. We'll fix it so we can be in the same company, and bunk together. What do you say?"
"Splendid! if you're willing. Can it be done? I'm in company M of the —th Battalion."
"I know of the same thing having been done since I've been here. We'll try it on, anyway."
They did try it on, and three days later the transfer was made. After that they were comrades indeed, occupying the same quarters, marching shoulder to shoulder with each other in the ranks, sharing with each other all the comforts and privations of life in the barracks, moved by a common impulse of patriotism and chivalry, longing for the day to come when they could prove their mettle under fire.
But it was not until February 1916 that they went abroad. After three months of intensive training they were hardened, supple, and skillful. But their military education was not yet complete. Commanders of armies know that raw or semi-raw troops are worse than useless in modern warfare. Soldiers in these days must know their business thoroughly if they are to meet an enemy on equal terms. They must be artisans as well as soldiers, laborers as well as riflemen, human machines compounded of blood and courage.
So, in a great camp not far from London, there were three months more of drill and discipline and drastic preparation for the firing line.
But at last, in late May, when the young grass was green on England's lawns, and the wings of birds were flashing everywhere in the sunshine, and nature was rioting in leaf and flower, a troop-ship, laden to the gunwales with the finest and the best of Canada's young patriots and many of the most stalwart youth of the States, landed on the welcoming shore of France. In England evidences of the great war had been marked, abundant and harrowing. But here, in the country whose soil had been invaded, the grim and stirring actualities of the mighty conflict were brought home to the onlooker with startling distinctness. At the railroad station, where the troops entrained for the front, every sight and sound was eloquent with the tenseness of preparation and the tragedy of the long fight. Soldiers were everywhere. Coats of blue, trousers of red, jackets of green, gave color and variety to the prevailing mass of sober khaki. Here too, dotting the hurrying throng, were the pathetic figures of the stricken and wounded, haggard, bandaged, limping, maimed, on canes and crutches, back from the front, released from the hospitals, seeking the rest and quiet that their sacrifices and heroism had so well earned. And here too, ministering to the needs of the suffering and the helpless, were many of the white-robed nurses of the Red Cross.
It was evening when the train bearing the first section of the —th Battalion of Canadian Light Infantry to which Pen and Aleck belonged steamed slowly out of the station. All night, in the darkness, across the fields and through the fine old forests of northern France the slow rumble of the coaches, interrupted by many stops, kept up. But in the gray of the early morning, a short distance beyond Amiens, in the midst of a mist covered meadow, the train pulled up for the last time. This had been fighting ground. Here the invading hosts of Germany had been met and driven back. Ruined farm houses, shattered trees, lines of old trenches scarring the surface of the meadow, all told their eloquent tale of ruthless and devastating war. And yonder, in the valley, the slow-moving Somme wound its shadowy way between green banks and overhanging foliage as peacefully and beautifully as though its silent waters had never been flecked with the blood of dying men. Even now, as the troops detrained and marched to the sections of the field assigned them, the dull and continuous roar of cannon in the distance came to their ears with menacing distinctness.
"It's the thunder of the guns!" exclaimed Pen. "I hope to-morrow finds us where they're firing them."
"I'm with you," responded Aleck. "I shall be frightened to death when they first put me under fire, but the sooner I'm hardened to it the better."