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At a quarter past eleven on the morning of the 2nd October 1914 we arrived at Khartum North, where we detrained and were met by the Sirdar, General Sir Reginald Wingate, then Governor-General of the Sudan, and his Staff.
The march was through Vauchelles-les-Domart to Longpré. Thence we were dragged by train through Amiens to Marcelçave, where we detrained and marched to huts at Wiencourt. We were about to relieve the French in the line near Chaulnes. The latter village, where the Battalion was billeted, improved on acquaintance.
Lieutenant Colonel Scott had orders to proceed to the railhead, and then advance on foot into the Argonne. The cars were crowded, and the railway journey was long and fatiguing. They detrained at night, in the rain, at what the men said seemed to be the jumping off place. There was no town, and the railway station had been bombed the day before, by an air fleet out to explode artillery ammunition.
There was always something interesting going on at the station. One day a regiment from Warsaw had just been detrained there when a German Taube came sailing over the station throwing down grenades. Every man immediately began to fire up in the air, and we ran much more risk of being killed by a Russian bullet than by the German Taube.
Mantua was not reached until 1 a.m. on the 29th, but finally the two Companies detrained at Saletto; and in the afternoon billeting orders arrived, and the evening found them lodged in a private house, a theatre and a monastery at Noventa.
Serbia needed supplies; Russia needed supplies; a rebellion threatened in South Africa; the Turks threatened the invasion of Egypt. England had to spread her energy out over a vast empire with an army that had barely escaped annihilation. Every soldier who fought must be supplied overseas. German officers put a man on a railroad train and he detrained near the front.
We detrained at Aire, and though we had only another four miles to go to our billets at Fontes, it was quite enough for anyone with a touch of the "'flu." From here parties went out every day to reconnoitre the various lines in the Robecq-St Venant sector, and to get to know the country before we were told to take over the line.
While the infantry detrained, the Colonials, followed by the 5th Lancers, rode towards some low hills, whence some parties of Boers had maintained a distant fire. These were at once scattered. The infantry marched along some ridges parallel with the railway, but a mile away, while the Devonshire regiment kept along the low ground by the line.
A few miles further on we detrained at Poperinghe and were soon marching along a beautiful avenue of poplars now perhaps the most famous highway in Flanders, the Vlamertinghe road. Refugees passed us with all their worldly effects piled on a waggon, the women and little children clattering along behind in their wooden sabots. It seemed so unnecessary.
Charity felt that she had brought with her the weight of the mountains instead of their calm when she detrained in the thronged solitude of the Grand Central Terminal. And the house with its sympathetic family of servants only was as home-like as the Mammoth Cave. She took up her work with a frenzy. The need of a man to act as her adjutant in the business details was imperative.
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