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Their spirit of corps had a dervish fatalism. They had begged to have a share in the war and Partow had consented. In the night after their long journey, while Westerling's ram was getting its death-blow, they had detrained and started for the front. But the Grays were going as fast as the Braves, and they had been unable to get into action. "Wait for us!
He remained motionless until the other detrained passengers swam past, until the red tail lights of the last coach vanished into the deeps; then he rushed for the exit to the street. Away toward the far end of the platform there appeared a shadowy patch in the fog. It grew and presently took upon itself the shape of a man.
First the Battalion entrained at Méricourt in the afternoon of Sunday the 1st October. At midnight the men detrained at Longpré and marched to Cocquerel, arriving at 3 a.m. the next day. The men then bivouacked until reveille at 6-30 a.m.
They were in the shell-zone now, and sometimes a regiment on the march was tracked all along the way by British gun-fire directed from airplanes and captive balloons. It was the fate of a captured officer I met who had detrained at Bapaume for the trenches at Contalmaison. At Bapaume his battalion was hit by fragments of twelve-inch shells.
French poilus, detrained at Amiens station for a night on their way to some other part of the front, jostled among British soldiers, and their packs were a wonder to see. They were like traveling tinkers, with pots and pans and boots slung about their faded blue coats, and packs bulging with all the primitive needs of life in the desert of the battlefields beyond civilization.
I would sooner fight than be a waiter, so when the order came through from headquarters calling for a draft of 250 reinforcements for France, I volunteered. This was very brief. He asked our names and numbers and said, "Fit," and we went out to fight. We were put into troop trains and sent to Southampton, where we detrained, and had our trench rifles issued to us.
Here they detrained, bivouacked uneasily by the railway trains and stores were passing along it all night and next morning he: marched eastward through a cold, overcast dawn, and a morning, first cloudy and then blazing, over a large spacious country-side interspersed by forest towards Arlon.
The following day it entrained at Pont de Briques Station, on the train which brought the transport and machine-gun sections from Havre. The complete battalion detrained at Cassel, and after marching all night arrived in billets at Hardifort at 5 a.m. on the 21st April.
Often, as I know, they were detrained at rail-heads in the wind and rain and by ghastly errors of staff-work kept waiting for their food until they were weak and famished.
Soon the upper works of a mine showed, and then more, and all at once we were in a great industrial district. At Elandsfontein, the junction for Johannesburg, we had a long halt, and a good breakfast, getting free coffee from a huge boiling vat. We detrained by electric light, and bivouacked in an open place just outside the station.
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