It is a little disappointing, this arrival at the Base, for there is not even a proper station in sight; you have been brought, like so many sheep or cows, into the dismal goods station, and you look in vain for the people who should be there to welcome you, to throw flowers, and to cheer as you arrive at the first halt of your great Odyssey. However, you shake yourself, you bundle your valise out of the carriage on to the railway line, and, with your late carriage companions, you go across to the sentry and his bundles of straw.
"Can you tell us where the Railway Transport Officer is to be found?" you ask. "We've got orders to report to him as soon as we can."
"Yes, sir, they's always got those orders, but you won't find 'im not before 'alf-past nine. 'Is office is over there in them buildings." And a subaltern in the office gives you the same information—it is now five o'clock, and the R.T.O. who has your movement orders will not be here for four and a half hours. "Go and have a look round the town," suggests the subaltern.
The idea of "looking round a town" at five in the morning! You slouch over the bridge, and wander up and down the empty streets until an hotel shows up before you. You are very tired and very dirty and very unshaven. Instinctively you halt and feel your chins. "Dunno when we'll get another bath," suggests one of the party, and he goes to ring the bell. For ten minutes you ring the bell, and then the door is opened by a half-clothed porter who is also very tired and very dirty and very unshaven. He glares at you, and then signs to you to enter, after which he runs away and leaves you in a hall in the company of a dust pan and brush and a pile of chairs pushed up in the corner—no welcome and no flowers.
But in a moment there is a shuffle on the stairs, and a fat, buxom woman, with a cheerful face and a blouse undone down the back, makes her appearance. Oh yes, Messieurs les Officiers can have a bath—for two francs, including a towel; and they can have breakfast—for three and a half francs, including "ze English marmalade" and "un œuf à la coque" (which sets you to wondering whether she means a cock's egg, and, if so, what sort of a thing it may be). "It is a nice bath," she tells you, "and always full of Messieurs les Anglais, who forget all about the war and only think of baths and of football. No, zere is only one bath, but ze ozer officiers can wait," and she leads one of the party away into the dim corridors and up dim staircases.
Breakfast and a wash work wonders, and you still keep cheerful when the R.T.O. tells you at half-past nine that your camp is three miles away, that you may not see your valise for days unless you take a "taxi," and that there are only three "taxis" in the town. You wander about in search of one during the whole morning, you find the three all hiding away together in a side street, you bundle your valises into one, and arrive at the camp just in time for lunch.
It is a strange life, that life at the Base—it is like life on an "island" in a London thoroughfare, with the traffic streaming by on either side. All day long there are men arriving to go to the front, all day long there are men coming back on their way to England. For a week you live on this "island," equipping men for drafts all the morning—for most of them seem to have dropped part of their equipment into the sea on the way across—and sitting in cafés in the evenings, drinking strange mixtures of wines and syrups and soda water.
Then, one day, the Colonel sends for you. Your turn has come to set out on that journey which may have no return. "You will proceed to the front by the four o'clock train this afternoon," he says. "You are instructed to conduct a party of 100 Northshire Highlanders, who are in 'S' Camp, which is over there," and he waves his hand vaguely in the direction of the typewriter in the corner of the room.
These are your instructions, and, after a prolonged hunt for "S" Camp, you march off to the station at the head of a hundred Scotchmen, not one of whom you can understand. At the station you make a great show of nominal rolls and movement orders, and finally get your Highlanders packed safely in their compartments under strict injunctions not to leave the train without your orders.
Now comes the time to look after your own comfort. If you have "been up" before you have learnt that it is wise to stroll into the town for your last proper tea, and not to come back much before six o'clock, by which time the train is thinking of reluctantly crawling out of the station. If, in your absence, someone has else has tried to settle in your compartment, providing his rank is not superior to your own, you get rid of him either by lying strenuously or by using a little force. Thus, if you are lucky, a good liar, or a muscular man, you can keep the carriage for yourself, your particular friend, your kits, and your provisions (which last, in the form of bottles, require no small space).