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When we got inside of the cars, we thought that perhaps the sign painter had reversed the order of things. After forty-eight hours in these trucks we detrained at Rouen. At this place we went through an intensive training for ten days. This training consisted of the rudiments of trench warfare.
Jimmie got his notice, and packed his kit and answered roll call and took his place; at sundown of the next day he was detrained at a "mobilization-camp" another huge city, described in the cautious military fashion as "Somewhere in New Jersey", though everybody within a hundred miles knew its exact location.
Instead of pushing them ahead, they were detrained at Svagena, and then entrained again from day to day, always about fifty versts behind the Japanese front. In addition the Japanese never trusted their Allies.
We disembarked, or "detrained," as they say down there, at a little station on the railroad called Londiani, eight miles south of the equator and about eighty miles from Victoria Nyanza.
The day before a force of South African Police, Defence Force, and South African Mounted Riflemen left Pretoria, detrained at Greyling's Post, on the Pietersburg Line, and started in pursuit of the last big rebel commando at large.
An utterance from one Irishman, and the general response to it, showed this in extraordinary degree. Our Division, or rather two brigades of it, had detrained in France on the 19th of December; the first impression as we shook ourselves together for the march to strange billets was the sound of guns.
After a short journey it detrained in the pitch dark at Brie, where Lewis guns, etc., were placed on lorries, the orders being to move into billets near Peronne. Whilst waiting for guides, however, a staff officer of the Division arrived with fresh orders. Instead of proceeding to billets the Battalion was to move straight into the fight.
It seemed a long time since they had seen him last at Sailly Labourse, and his presence was very welcome to all the old members. An outbreak of scarlet fever prolonged the Battalion's stay for a few days, but on the 23rd February it left Proven, detrained at the Asylum at Ypres and moved into billets at the Prison, with two of the companies in the Magazine.
It seems but yesterday to me now, that July day so many years ago, when our four companies, numbering fewer than four hundred men, detrained from the Union Pacific train at Fort Harker on the Smoky Hill. And the faces of the men who were to lead us are clear in memory.
Omer we were told where we should detrain, a fact hitherto concealed from us, and eventually at 2-35 p.m. in a blizzard and snow storm we reached Arneke, detrained at once, and marched about five miles to the little village of Hardifort, where we arrived in the dark.
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