“On the 15th December we marched to Fresnes, and from there, after a night at Deux Acren, arrived at Thollembeek and Vollezeel, two villages about thirty-five miles from Brussels.

“Though many of the railways and roads in the neighbourhood had been destroyed before the enemy retired, this part of the country had not been in the fighting area at any time during the war. But the population had suffered much from four years of occupation. They had had little food; they had received no money for troops billeted on them; they had had their men taken from them to work behind the line or in Germany.... The release from such an existence, combined with a very real desire to express their thanks to the English nation, not only for its great share in winning the war and rescuing their country from oppression, but also for having provided a haven of rest for so many of their fellow-countrymen in England, incited the inhabitants of Thollembeek and Vollezeel to stretch their hospitality to its utmost limits. They made every effort to make us comfortable in our billets during the long and rather tedious period of waiting for demobilization.... Towards the end of January the battalion was selected to represent the division, and incidentally the British Army, in a royal review at Brussels by the King of the Belgians. After a week of preparation we went by motor bus to Anderlecht, a suburb of Brussels, where we were billeted for the night. The following day the review took place, and after two days’ holiday we returned to our Belgian villages.... On the 27th February the battalion moved to Grammont, a town of about thirteen thousand inhabitants, and a few days later all the remaining men (about one hundred and twenty) who joined the Army after the 1st January, 1916, went off to the 1st Battalion The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment). The battalion was now reduced practically to cadre strength of four officers and forty-six men. During the month of March a cordial and appreciative Order was issued by Major-General E. S. Girdwood on relinquishing the command of the 74th Division.... On the termination of hostilities Captain G. H. Peckham received the M.C., and C.S.M.’s P. Faulkner and L. Salt and Sgts. H. J. Smith and S. F. Sparrow received the M.S.M.... The act of placing their colours in Canterbury Cathedral marked the end of the 10th (Yeomanry) Battalion the Buffs. In the short period of its existence it had fully played its part in the war. Formed on the 1st February, 1917, it ceased to exist on the 21st June, 1919. It fought in Palestine and France. Its casualties numbered 8 officers and 134 men killed, and 24 officers and 486 men wounded.”

The 4th and 5th Battalions had, of course, quite a different status to those alluded to above. They had been for some time and still are[34] permanent portions of the regiment, and so when war was over they could not be disbanded, but merely disembodied in the same way that they were each year after the annual training. As has already been noticed, circumstances postponed this desirable rest from soldiering for a very long time. The unrest and continued wars in India and her frontiers kept the 4th abroad, and the necessity of maintaining white troops in Mesopotamia had similar results in the case of the 5th. The former did not embark for home till November, 1919, a full year after the armistice, and the battalion was disembodied the same month. The cadre of the 5th Battalion, still under Lt.-Colonel Body, D.S.O., O.B.E., a very tiny remnant of those who embarked in 1914, reached home in January, 1920, and were also, of course, disembodied. The story of the 3rd or Special Reserve Battalion after the 11th November, 1918, is as follows: the unit was still quartered in the Citadel at Dover and was about 1,400 strong, many of the men awaiting demobilization, and of the officers orders to proceed to India, for which duty they had volunteered. Towards the end of the month several companies had to proceed to Folkestone for police duty owing to trouble with certain leave-expired soldiers, who could not see the necessity of returning to their units in France. In February, 1919, came orders to move to the south of Ireland in relief of the 3rd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who had been in that country a considerable time. After a short period in Kinsale, the 3rd Buffs were quartered in Victoria Barracks, Cork, and there remained during the summer of 1919, except that, owing to certain troubles, a tour of duty at Limerick for a fortnight or so had to be undertaken.

On the 7th September the whole of the men were handed over to Lt.-Colonel R. McDouall, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., who had just been appointed to command the 1st Battalion of the Buffs; and as there now hardly existed such a unit, as far as the necessary soldiers went, the members of the 3rd were simply handed altogether over to the 1st.

This 1st Battalion had been, in January, 1919, at Vettweiss, in Germany, about fifteen miles from Cologne, and demobilization was in progress till the 15th March, on which date eighteen officers and three hundred men, under Major Lord Teynham, the second in command, were transferred in one body to the 6th Battalion Royal West Kent Regiment. This left but a strength of forty-six men, but the regular officers, of course, still remained, as these had cast in their lot with the Buffs for the greater part of their professional lives, and not for emergency times only, so every two private soldiers had an officer to look after them. The ranks, however, were somewhat swollen by the arrival of the band from England. The cadre was now quartered at Sinzenich and remained there till the middle of May, occupied in amusements and recreation and generally having a happy time of relaxation after all that had been gone through.

On the 22nd May the 1st Battalion landed at Tilbury, having travelled by Antwerp, and, on the 26th of the month, it was received, welcomed and entertained by the mayor and officials of the good old city of Canterbury. It was at last in very truth home again, but the cadre now consisted of only about twenty men.

With these twenty Lt.-Colonel McDouall, accompanied by his own adjutant and quartermaster, proceeded in September to Cork and, as we have seen, took over there the 3rd Battalion in a body. In fact, only the Permanent Staff of the latter remained to return to Kent. Soon afterwards the 1st Battalion was again quartered at Fermoy, the garrison it had left for war five years before. Of the nine hundred soldiers or thereabouts who marched out of the little Irish town under Colonel Hill in 1914, five officers and thirty-five other ranks returned; but these, of course, had not been with their unit during the whole of the interval.

The names of these forty soldiers are appended:—

The 2nd Battalion came home to England from the Bosphorus in April, 1919, and was quartered in Connaught Barracks, Dover, where it remained till November of the same year, when, under the command of Lt.-Colonel Trevor, D.S.O., it embarked at Southampton for India, where it had been when the war commenced. Multan, in the Punjaub, was the new station into which the 2nd Battalion of the Buffs settled down to take up the threads again of routine garrison life in the East. The following are the names of officers and other ranks who left India in 1914 and returned there in 1919:—