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Updated: June 5, 2025
The last day our route lay chiefly through water meadows, and by 9.30 we had reached our detraining station Noyelles whence after a hot breakfast we marched ten miles to our destination St Firmin near the mouth of the Somme. Our transport had already been here about a week, and we found excellent quarters in the long straggling village.
Detraining at Brandhoek, the Ten Hundred marched to Brake Camp, a rambling collection of huts built in a wood near the main road running between Poperinghe and Ypres, within a short distance of Vlamertynghe. It was "Pop!" Unchanged, grim and grey, visited day and night by bomb and shell with the ceaseless activity of that Belgian area.
The orders were posted up as usual at all street corners, a plan which is adopted for the convenience of units billeted a great distance from headquarters, and the typewritten orders had an air of momentous finality: The battalion moves to-morrow. Parade will be at 4.30 a.m. Entraining and detraining and embarking must be done in absolute silence.
A corps of cavalry and four territorial divisions commanded by General Brugère received the order to establish itself on both banks of the Somme and protect the detraining of the army of Castelnau. From September 21 to September 26, 1914, all the French forces that had newly arrived were engaged in the Lassigny-Roye-Péronne region.
Ten days later the unit was relieved and marched to Estaires, where it arrived on the morning of the 1st April. Leaving this town later in the day, it made Haverskerque that night, left there the next day for Steenwerck, and entrained for Doullens. Detraining at Doullens at 1 a.m. on the 3rd, the Battalion proceeded by night march to Sus St. Leger.
Here is the bare catalogue: Infantry Base Depots, i.e. sleeping and mess quarters, for thousands of men belonging to the new armies; 16 hospitals with 21,000 beds, 3 rifle ranges; 2 training-camps; a machine-gun training-school; a vast laundry worked by Frenchwomen under British organisation, which washes for all the hospitals, 30,000 pieces a day; recreation huts of all types and kinds, official and voluntary; a Cinema theatre, seating 800 men, with performances twice a day; nurses' clubs; officers' clubs; a Supply Depot for food; an Ordnance Depot for everything that is not food; new sidings to the railway, where 1,000 men can be entrained on the one side, while 1,000 men are detraining on the other; or two full ambulance trains can come in and go out; a Convalescent Depot of 2,000 patients, and a Convalescent Horse Depot of 2,000 horses, etcetera.
Of no mediocre turn of mind mechanically, he, assisted by Terry Reardon, made a few suggestions that the British veterinaries in charge were very glad to accept. The real enjoyment of the trip, however, Cappy found down at the breaking corrals where the horses were detraining. They were all young and full of life, and fully ninety per cent of them had only been halter-broken.
On the following morning, a detachment of F Company arrived, dragging two gatling guns. The Hollmans saw them detraining, from their lookout in the courthouse cupola, and, realizing that the end had come, resolved upon a desperate sortie. Simultaneously, every door and lower window of the court-house burst open to discharge a frenzied rush of men, firing as they came.
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