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Spanish influenza, which was so prevalent everywhere, now began to attack us, and when we left Grand Rullecourt on 26th June, as we had about nine miles to march to our entraining station Ligny, 150 were considered unfit to march, and had to come on by motor lorry the following day.
In the light of later experience the time spent in Wailly was very comfortable indeed, and during the next two months many wished they could return. About the 20th July the Battalion left Gouy-en-Artois for the scene of battle. To begin with this meant a three days' march to the entraining locality. The first day the Battalion got to Sus St.
Day! His bursting heart was now saying, "England! England!" The column passed and was gone. He was left with his most frightful feelings. He could do nothing now. Four o'clock in the morning. But he must do something now. He could not go home till he had. He must. He followed to the station. The men were entraining in the goods yard.
"A nice level lot," said the Colonel to the Second-in-Command, as they watched the first four companies entraining. "Fit to do anything," said the Second-in-Command, enthusiastically. "But it seems to me they're a thought too young and tender for the work in hand. It's bitter cold up at the Front now." "They're sound enough," said the Colonel. "We must take our chance of sick casualties."
Then, amidst shrieks and cheers and cries of "Brave Tommy" and "We love you," the despatch riders of the finest and most famous of all Divisions rode singing to the station, where we slept peacefully on straw beside a large fire until the train came in and the Signal Company arrived. Our entraining at Pont St Maxence began with a carouse and ended with a cumulative disappointment.
A medical inspection of three hundred men with their shirts up in a dark shed is a weird and bashful spectacle. An N.C.O. was supervising the entraining at each truck; the escort was marching up and down the permanent way on the off-side. The R.T.O. handed the movement orders to the senior officer in command of drafts, and I saw that they were going to get a move on very soon.
A couple of hours after we embarked Major Marshall came along with the left half battalion and reported a very successful entraining. The railway company, however, had provided a train with one coach too few, and four horses and eight mules had to be left behind to be brought by the next train.
It was a November Sunday evening. A crowd of leave-expired soldiers were entraining at the Eastern Station. They would be dropped at their respective garrisons along the line of some 400 kilometres separating the capital from the frontier. They had dined, supped, feasted with friends and relatives: now they were voicing regretful farewells by medley of songs and ear-splitting serenades.
For three days it had been waiting on a siding, in the same state as when it had come from Paris, and since it had been run into the station again white flags had been waving from the foremost and hindmost of its carriages, by way of preventing any mistakes on the part of the pilgrims, whose entraining was usually a very long and troublesome affair.
The fathers and the other older men stand about in groups, leaning on their sticks, talking in whispers, recounting former experiences of entraining, or recruiting, of those abominable three years; and the young girls the sweethearts, the sisters, the friends dare not speak for fear they should break down and help to unman the lads.
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