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Updated: May 15, 2025
We entrained at Rue early on the morning of the 21st, and made our way via Etaples and St Pol to Ligny St Flochel, whence we had a long fifteen miles march to Humbercourt. That night we had our first experience of night bombing. From here several senior officers went for a day or two's experience of trench life to a New Zealand Division in the Hebuterne sector north of Albert.
There were plain signs of massacre at hand all the way from the coast to the lines. At Etaples and other places near Boulogne hospital huts and tents were growing like mushrooms in the night. From casualty clearing stations near the front the wounded the human wreckage of routine warfare were being evacuated "in a hurry" to the base, and from the base to England.
The burst of laughter that followed, all out of proportion to the humour of the remark, revealed the tensity of the strain through which they had passed. Through the little town of Etaples they drove together in almost complete silence, until they had emerged into the country, lying spread out about them in all the tender beauty of the soft spring evening.
The sunset is fine, the air is now a little cooler after the heat of the day, and the sea and the river calm and refreshing." Thus ended my long wait at Étaples. Having had breakfast, I reported at the New Siding Station at 6.50. I was ordered to get into the train which was drawn up there, and get out at Hazebrouck, where I would receive further orders from the R.T.O. there.
He had been in France for a fortnight, at Etaples, and in Paris, studying new methods and appliances for the benefit of the hospital. But whether he was at home or no, the benefactions of Carton never ceased. Almost every other day a motor from the Hall drove up laden with fruit and flowers, with books and magazines. The fourth week of September opened.
He therefore trusted that, in the spirit of his orders to Villeneuve dated July the 26th, that admiral would sail to Cadiz, gather up other French and Spanish ships, and return to Ferrol and Brest with a mighty force of some sixty sail of the line: "I count on your zeal for my service, on your love for the fatherland, on your hatred of this Power which for forty generations has oppressed us, and which a little daring and perseverance on your part will for ever reduce to the rank of the small Powers: 150,000 soldiers ... and the crews complete are embarked on 2,000 craft of the flotilla, which, despite the English cruisers, forms a long line of broadsides from Etaples to Cape Grisnez.
The incidents of the railway journey from Marseilles to Etaples, en route to Armentières, told in detail, would fill a book. It was made in ordinary cattle trucks, in which, packed forty to a truck, we spent four days and a half at one stretch.
For example, if a road is called La Rue de Bois, we simply call it "Roodiboys," and leave it at that. On the same principle, Etaples is modified to "Eatables," and Sailly-la-Bourse to "Sally Booze." But in Belgium more drastic procedure is required.
I landed at Boulogne at 4 that afternoon and we went straight on to Étaples the same evening. The following letter recounts my journey and arrival at that great camp upon the sand-hills: "May 27th, 1917. "I have now, once more, safely arrived in this place, where there is nothing but sand. I expect you will already have received my communications from Folkestone.
"I should never have sought you out, for the reason I have given you, but since we have met you will not refuse me your friendship? You will let me come and see you?" She laughed softly. "I shall be very unhappy if you do not. Come to-morrow afternoon to tea at five o'clock. There will be no one else there, and we can talk of those times on the beach at Étaples.
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