United States or Ireland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Round Game Department having furnished us with one set of rules, the Practical Joke Department prepared another, entirely different, and issued them to the officers who superintended such things as entrainment and embarkation. At least, that is the most charitable explanation of the course of action adopted by the few Mr. Hydes whom we encountered. Two of these humorists linger in the memory.
Therefore, when we were resting on the 21st, and speculating on the possibility of taking part in the Cambrai Battle so dramatically begun the day before, orders arrived for entrainment next afternoon with nine days' rations. The journey was made in two trains, under the command of Colonel Clarke and Major Aldworth respectively, which made for Italy by different routes, after leaving Troyes.
The table was between them. "But first," said Boylan, "there is a little business in which you can help. My friend, Mowbray... is just coming back to life from Russian wounds. I could not leave him without being assured of his care. There is one little nurse from the entrainment wards it is a good story, which I will tell in good time competent to care for him.
Our stay at Vaudricourt was not a long one, and we soon moved to Béthune, preparatory to entrainment for the South, for it was now no longer a secret that we were going down to fight a real battle at last. The new General introduced a "Blob" formation, which was both easy and effective, and we practised this once or twice outside the town.
There were several hours to spend in waiting, and during this time the kits were retrieved from the station yard and a prudent change was made from soft hats into shrapnel helmets and fighting equipment. After a rapid entrainment we at last pulled out at about 2 p.m.
A philosopher, through indolence and carelessness before the Revolution, superstitious afterwards, through weakness and entrainment, he threatened the Revolution with his sword from a distance. He appeared more fitted to irritate than to conquer, and at this early period he already manifested that unbridled rashness and that useless spirit of provocation which was one day to cost him a throne.
When Captain Kilburn announced that the entrainment was well under way, we started in his big limousine, shivering a little in evening cloaks flung on hastily over low-necked dresses. We waited till the platform was clear of the great mass of khaki-clad young men, and then timidly appeared, to stare through the dusk of early morning in search of friends.
Out of the two hundred present, only one was not passed by the army surgeons, and even he was not definitely refused. The corps will proceed to-morrow to the Gare Saint-Lazare for entrainment. They will be sent, at first, to Rouen. M.F.A. Granger, a young Frenchman, arrived to-day in Paris from New York, where he left his wife and family.
...An officer came to her from the bullet-ward. "You are to stay until Mr. Boylan, the correspondent, comes," he said. "But will they know? They were good to let me come." "Colonel Hartz has signed the order. Word has been sent to the entrainment wards. You were attached there, I believe?" "Yes." "Let us know in case of any need here." "Yes. Thank you."
There were fourteen hundred German prisoners awaiting entrainment, a mass of slate-gray men lying on the wet earth in huddled heaps of misery, while a few of our fresh-faced Tommies stood among them with fixed bayonets. They were the men who had surrendered from deep dugouts in the trenches between us and Loos and from the cellars of Loos itself. They had seen many of their comrades bayoneted.
Word Of The Day