I rose from bed at three and set about to prepare breakfast, while my cot-mate busied himself with our equipment, putting everything into shape, buckling belts and flaps, burnishing bayonets and oiling the bolts of the rifles. Twenty-four hours' rations were stored away in our haversacks all ready, the good landlady had been at work stewing and frying meat and cooking dainty scones up to twelve o'clock the night before.
When breakfast, a good hearty meal of tea, buttered toast, fried bacon and tomatoes, was over, we went out to our places. The morning was chilly, a cold wind splashed with hail swept along the streets and whirled round the corners, causing the tails of our great coats to beat sharply against our legs. It was still very dark, only a few street-lamps were lighted and these glimmered doubtfully as if ashamed of being noticed. Men in full marching order stamped out from every billet, took their way to the main street, where the transport wagons, wheels against kerbstones, horses in shafts, and drivers at reins, stood in mathematical order, and from there on to the parade ground where sergeants, with book in one hand and electric torch in the other, were preparing to call the roll.
Ammunition was served out, one hundred and twenty rounds to each man, and this was placed in the cartridge pouches, rifles were inspected and identity discs examined by torch-light. This finished, we were allowed to stand easy and use ground-sheets for a shelter from the biting hail. Our blankets were already gone. The transport wagons had disappeared and with them our field-bags. I suppose they will await us in —— but I anticipate, and at present all we know is that our regiment is bound for some destination unknown where, when we arrive, we shall have to wear two pairs of socks at our work.
We stood by till eight o'clock. The day had cleared and the sun was shining brightly when we marched off to the station, through streets lined with people, thoughtful men who seemed to be very sad, women who wept and children who chattered and sang "Tipperary."
Three trains stood in the sidings by the station. Places were allotted to the men, eight occupied each compartment, non-commissioned officers occupied a special carriage, the officers travelled first-class.
Soon we were hurrying through England to a place unknown. Most of my comrades were merry and a little sentimental; they sang music-hall songs that told of home. There were seven with me in my compartment, the Jersey youth, whom I saw kissing a weeping sweetheart in the cold hours of the early day; Mervin, my cot-mate, who always cleaned the rifles while I cooked breakfast in the morning; Bill, the Cockney youth who never is so happy as when getting the best of an argument in the coffee-shop of which I have already spoken, and the Oxford man. The other three were almost complete strangers to me, they have just been drafted into our regiment; one was very fat and reminded me of a Dickens character in Pickwick Papers; another who soon fell asleep, his head warm in a Balaclava helmet, was a tall, strapping youth with large muscular hands, which betoken manual labour, and the last was a slightly-built boy with a budding moustache which seemed to have been waxed at one end. We noticed this, and the fat soldier said that the wax had melted from the few lonely hairs on the other side of the lip.
Stations whirled by, Mervin leant out of the window to read their names, but was never successful. Cigarettes were smoked, the carriage was full of tobacco fumes and the floor littered with "fag-ends." Rifles were lying on the racks, four in each side, and caps, papers and equipment piled on top of them. The Jersey youth made a remark: