| Lieut.-Col. Hon. G. H. Morris | Commanding Officer. |
| Major H. F. Crichton | Senior Major. |
| Captain Lord Desmond FitzGerald | Adjutant. |
| Lieut. E. J. F. Gough | Transport Officer. |
| Lieut. E. B. Greer | M. Gun Officer. |
| Hon. Lieut. H. Hickie | Quartermaster. |
| Lieut. H. J. S. Shields (R.A.M.C.) | Medical Officer. |
| Lieut. Hon. Aubrey Herbert, M.P. | Interpreter. |
| No. 1 Company. | |
| Capt. Hon. A. E. Mulholland. | Lieut. C. A. S. Walker. |
| Capt. Lord John Hamilton. | 2nd Lieut. N. L. Woodroffe. |
| Lieut. Hon. H. R. Alexander. | 2nd Lieut. J. Livingstone-Learmonth. |
| No. 2 Company. | |
| Major H. A. Herbert Stepney. | Lieut. J. S. N. FitzGerald. |
| Capt. J. N. Guthrie. | Lieut. W. E. Hope. |
| Lieut. E. J. F. Gough. | 2nd Lieut. O. Hughes-Onslow. |
| No. 3 Company. | |
| Capt. Sir Delves Broughton, Bart. (replaced by Capt. H. Hamilton Berners). | Lieut. Hon. Hugh Gough. |
| Capt. Hon. T. E. Vesey. | Lieut. Lord Guernsey. |
| 2nd Lieut. Viscount Castlerosse. | |
| No. 4 Company. | |
| Capt. C. A. Tisdall. | Lieut. R. Blacker-Douglass. |
| Capt. A. A. Perceval. | Lieut. Lord Robert Innes-Ker. |
| Lieut. W. C. N. Reynolds. | 2nd Lieut. J. T. P. Roberts. |
| Details at the Base. | |
| Capt. Lord Arthur Hay. | 2nd Lieut. Sir Gerald Burke, Bart. |
They reached Havre at 6 A. M. on August 13, a fiercely hot day, and, tired after a sleepless night aboard ship, and a long wait, in a hot, tin-roofed shed, for some missing men, marched three miles out of the town to Rest Camp No. 2 “in a large field at Sanvic, a suburb of Havre at the top of the hill.” Later, the city herself became almost a suburb to the vast rest-camps round it. Here they received an enthusiastic welcome from the French, and were first largely introduced to the wines of the country, for many maidens lined the steep road and offered bowls of drinks to the wearied.
Next day (August 14) men rested a little, looking at this strange, bright France with strange eyes, and bathed in the sea; and Captain H. Berners, replacing Sir Delves Broughton, joined. At eleven o’clock they entrained at Havre Station under secret orders for the Front. The heat broke in a terrible thunderstorm that soaked the new uniforms. The crowded train travelled north all day, receiving great welcomes everywhere, but no one knowing what its destination might be. After more than seventeen hours’ slow progress by roads that were not revealed then or later, they halted at Wassigny, at a quarter to eleven on the night of August 15, and, unloading in hot darkness, bivouacked at a farm near the station.
On the morning of August 16 they marched to Vadencourt, where, for the first time, they went into billets. The village, a collection of typical white-washed tiled houses with a lovely old church in the centre, lay out pleasantly by the side of a poplar-planted stream. The 2nd Coldstream Guards were also billeted here; the Headquarters of the 4th Guards Brigade, the 2nd Grenadier Guards, and 3rd Coldstream being at Grougis. All supplies, be it noted, came from a village of the ominous name of Boue, which—as they were to learn through the four winters to follow—means “mud.”
At Vadencourt they lay three days while the men were being inoculated against enteric. A few had been so treated before leaving Wellington Barracks, but, in view of the hurried departure, 90 per cent. remained to be dealt with. The Diary remarks that for two days “the Battalion was not up to much.” Major H. Crichton fell sick here.
On the 20th August the march towards Belgium of the Brigade began, via Etreux and Fesmy (where Lieutenant and Quartermaster Hickie went sick and had to be sent back to railhead) to Maroilles, where the Battalion billeted, August 21, and thence, via Pont sur Sambre and Hargnies, to La Longueville, August 22. Here, being then five miles east of Malplaquet, the Battalion heard the first sound of the guns of the war, far off; not knowing that, at the end of all, they would hear them cease almost on that very spot.
At three o’clock in the morning of August 23 the Brigade marched via Riez de l’Erelle into Belgian territory and through Blaregnies towards Mons where it was dimly understood that some sort of battle was in the making. But it was not understood that eighty thousand British troops with three hundred guns disposed between Condé, through Mons towards Binche, were meeting twice that number of Germans on their front, plus sixty thousand Germans with two hundred and thirty guns trying to turn their left flank, while a quarter of a million Germans, with close on a thousand guns, were driving in the French armies on the British right from Charleroi to Namur, across the Meuse and the Sambre. This, in substance, was the situation at Mons. It supplied a sufficient answer to the immortal question, put by one of the pillars of the Battalion, a drill sergeant, who happened to arrive from home just as that situation had explained itself, and found his battalion steadily marching south. “Fwhat’s all this talk about a retreat?” said he, and strictly rebuked the shouts of laughter that followed.[1]