That day at Aldershot every man was given a chance to go back to Newfoundland. They had enlisted for one year only, and any man that wished to could demand to be sent home at the end of the year; and when Kitchener reviewed them, ten months of that year had gone. With the chance to go home in his grasp, every man of the first battalion reënlisted for the duration of the war. And it is on record to their eternal honor, that during the week preceding their departure from Aldershot, breaches of discipline were unknown; for over their heads hung the fear that they would be punished by being kept back from active service. To break a rule that week carried with it the suspicion of cowardice. This was the more remarkable, because many of the men were fishermen, trappers, hunters, and lumbermen, who, until their enlistment had said "Sir" to no man, and who gloried in the reputation given them by one inspecting officer as "the most undisciplined lot he had ever seen." From the day the Canadians left Salisbury Plain for the trenches of Flanders, the Newfoundlanders had been obsessed by one idea: they must get to the front.
I was in London when I heard of the inspection at Aldershot by Lord Kitchener, and of its results. I had expected to be able to rejoin my battalion in time to go with them to the Dardanelles; but when I applied for a transfer, I was told that I should have to stay in London. I tried to imagine myself explaining it to my friends in No. 11 section who were soon to embark for the Mediterranean. Apart altogether from that, I had gone through nearly a year of training, had slept on the ground in wet clothes, had drilled from early morning till late afternoon, and was perfectly fit. It had been pretty strenuous training, and I did not want to waste it in an office.
That evening I applied to the captain in charge of the office for a pass to Aldershot to bid good-by to my friends in the regiment. He granted it; and the next morning a train whirled me through pleasant English country to Aldershot. At the station I met an English Tommy.
"I suppose you're looking for the Newfoundlanders," he said, glancing at my shoulder badges. I was still wearing the service uniform I had worn in camp in Scotland, for I had not been regularly attached to the office force in London.
"I'll take you to Wellington Barracks," volunteered the Englishman. "That's where your lot is."
We trudged through sand, on to a gravel road, through the main street of the town of Aldershot, and into an asphalt square, surrounded by brick buildings, three storied, with iron-railed verandas. Men in khaki leaned over the veranda rails, smoking and talking. A regiment was just swinging in through one of the gaps between the lines.
Lord Kitchener talking to some Australians at Anzac[ToList]
"Company, at the halt, facing left, form close column of platoons." Company B of the First Newfoundland Regiment swung into position and halted in the square just in front of their quarters. "Company, Dismiss!" Hands smacked smartly on rifle stocks, heels clicked together, and the men of B Company fell out. A gray-haired, iron-mustached soldier, indelibly stamped English regular, carrying a bucket of swill across the square to the dump, stopped to watch them.