At the railroad station we were halted on a cobbled street for a weary three hours’ wait. There was an English-American Red Cross canteen there, and we bought them out of buns in short order and distributed them to the companies. An aviator appeared on the scene and amused us for a while by doing all sorts of acrobatics—loops, whirls, twists through the air—such as we had never seen before.
Finally we were formed and marched into the station, and boarded the funny little English coaches, and were locked up in different compartments. Canteen girls gave each of us a printed letter of welcome from King George, and finally we jolted out of the station, rolled along between factories and munition plants—manned mostly by girls and women—and so out into the countryside.
That was a wonderful ride through England on the last day of May. It was a perfect evening, the air soft and balmy; light until ten o’clock. It was like a toy country to us, beautifully ordered and groomed, with little villages here and there, and green hedgerows, and usually one or two Tommies on leave walking down the lane with their sweethearts—that made us homesick already. And the train sped along, stopping only once for us to get out and have some coffee and a drink of water; and we were all thrilled and excited and felt a little tickly in the stomach, as you do before a big football game. We were fast drawing near the greatest game, now being played to a finish.
As the night wore on, and it became dark, and we couldn’t look out the windows any more, our cramped quarters were anything but comfortable. Also, sanitary arrangements on European trains are conspicuous by their absence. When at last, at 2:00 A. M., we were told to detrain, we were pretty thoroughly uncomfortable.
After the usual hubbub of detraining—“which way’s comp’ny form?”—“I dunno”—“First squad”—“Ninth squad”—“Where’s me bayonet?”—“Oh, thanks”—“D’ja get the can open all right?”—We departed into the night, filing past a little station out into a dark road, and then at a good round pace on through silent, dark streets, for about a mile. There we were introduced to our first billet.
It was a large empty stone house in a row of similar ones. Bare floors, bare walls, but clean, and not so bad. After a vast amount of unnecessary fussing about the company got itself settled. Sixty men were to leave at six o’clock under Lt. Foulkes.
That night and early the next morning we heard for the first time the distant rumble of the guns in France.
In the morning we discovered that we were in an embarkation camp at Folkestone, near Dover. A beautiful place it was, something like Atlantic City, only everything seemed more permanent, and the boardwalk was lacking. The camp was a section of the town set apart for the purpose. Everything was well ordered. These Englishmen had been at the game a long time, and after some chafing and fussing around we discovered that though no one displayed any particular “pep,” nevertheless things really got done quite well; in the British way, of course. But woe be unto the ambitious Yank who sought to alter anything.
Most of the company had not even been in the service long enough to master the manual of arms, and part of the day was used in instilling the rudiments of this essential into them. Time was still left for a short ramble about Folkestone, however; and the promenade, town, pubs, Tommies and Waacs were all investigated enthusiastically and as thoroughly as time and opportunity permitted.
The next morning the battalion was formed at 6 A. M. and marched along cobbled streets to the pier, where we were sardined into a fast channel steamer, and donned those confounded lifebelts again for a short farewell wearing. Then, with an American destroyer racing along on either side, we slipped swiftly down under the Dover Cliffs, then swerving out and across the channel to Calais. A dock, a Red Cross train on the other side of it, a fisherman in a little boat alongside us—France at last.