All along the line are children, waving their grubby hands and shouting in monotonous reiteration, "Souvenir biskeet, souvenir bully biff," and you throw them their souvenirs without delay, for no man sets out for war without a plentiful stock of more interesting provisions to keep his spirits up. All along the train, in disobedience of orders, the carriage doors are open, and "Tommies" and "Jocks," and "Pats" are seated on the footboards, singing, shouting, laughing.
This, until night falls. Then, one by one, the carriage doors are shut, and the men set about the business of sleeping. Here and there, perhaps, is a man who stays awake, wondering what the future will bring him, how his wife and children will get on if he is killed, and how many of these men, who are lolling in grotesque attitudes all round him, will ever come back down the line. In the daylight, the excitement drives away these thoughts—there are songs to sing and sights to see—but as the train jolts on through the night, there seems to be an undefinable feeling of fear. What will it be like to be shelled, to fight, to die?
Morning brings cheerfulness again. There are halts at Boulogne and Calais; news must be obtained from English sentries and French railway officials; there is, in one place, a train of German prisoners; there are long halts at tiny stations where you can procure hot water while the O.C. Train discusses life with the R.T.O.; there are the thousand-and-one things which serve to remind you that you are in the war zone, although the country is peaceful, and you look in vain for shell holes and ruined houses.
At length the railhead is reached—from here the rumble of the guns can be heard—and the detrainment takes place. You fall your Highlanders in by the side of the train, you jerk your pack about in a vain effort to make it hang comfortably, a whistle blows, and you start off on your long march to your regiment, to those dull, mumbling guns, to your first peep of war.
A "cushy" wound, a long and aching journey in a motor ambulance, a nerve-racking night in a clearing hospital, where the groans of the dying, the hurrying of the orderlies, and your own pain all combine in a nightmare of horror, and next morning you are in the train once more—you are going back to the Base. But how different is this from the journey up to the front! The sound of distant firing has none of the interest of novelty; the shelling of an aeroplane, which would have filled you with excitement a short time ago, does not now even cause you to raise your eyes to watch; you are old in warfare, and blasé.
There is no room for fear on this train; it is crowded out by pain, by apathy, by hope. The man next you cannot live a week, but he seems content; at all events, it is not fear that one sees in his face. There is no fear—there is hope.
The train is bright with flowers; there are nurses, and books, and well-cooked food—there is even champagne for the select few. There is no longer the shattered country of the firing line, but there are hills and rivers, there is the sea near Wimereux, and the hope of being sent home to England. There are shattered wrecks that were men, there is the knowledge of hovering death, but, above all, there is hope.
So the train hastens on—no crawling this time—to the clearing house, the Base. Past the little sun-washed villages it runs, and the gleaming Seine brings smiles to wan faces. There, look, over there in the distance, are the wonderful spires and the quaint houses and the river, all fresh and laughing in the sun, and the trees up on the hill above the town are all tender green. Even if one is to die, one may get back home first; at all events, one has been spared to see God's clean country, and to breathe untainted air again.