The train moved off, and now here we all were back in clean, fresh, luxurious England, gliding along in an English train towards London.  It’s worth doing months and months of trenches to get that buoyant, electrical sensation of passing along through English country on one’s way to London on leave.

I spent the train journey thinking over what I should do during my seven days.  Time after time I mentally conjured up the forthcoming performance of catching the train at Paddington and gliding out of the shadows of the huge station into the sunlit country beyond—­the rapid express journey down home, the drive out from the station, back in my own land again!

We got into London in pretty quick time, and I rapidly converted my dreams into facts.

Still in the same old trench clothes, with a goodly quantity of Flanders mud attached, I walked into Paddington station, and collared a seat in the train on Number 1 platform.  Then, collecting a quantity of papers and magazines from the bookstalls, I prepared myself for enjoying to the full the two hours’ journey down home.

I spent a gorgeous week in Warwickshire, during which time my friend came along down to stay a couple of days with me, bringing my missing pack along with him.  He had had the joy of carrying it laden with shell cases across London, and taking it down with him to somewhere near Aldershot, and finally bringing it to me without having kept any of the contents ...  Such is a true friend.

As this book deals with my wanderings in France I will not go into details of my happy seven days’ leave.  I now resume at the point where I was due to return to France.  In spite of the joys of England as opposed to life in Flanders, yet a curious phenomenon presented itself at the end of my leave.  I was anxious to get back.  Strange, but true.  Somehow one felt that slogging away out in the dismal fields of war was the real thing to do.  If some one had offered me a nice, safe, comfortable job in England, I wouldn’t have taken it.  I claim no credit for this feeling of mine.  I know every one has the same.  That buccaneering, rough and tumble life out there has its attractions.  The spirit of adventure is in most people, and the desire and will to biff the Boches is in every one, so there you are.

I drifted back via London, Dover and Boulogne, and thence up the same old stagnant line to Creme de Menthe.  Once more back in the land of mud, bullets, billets, and star shells.

It was the greyest of grey days when I arrived at my one-horse terminus.  I got out at the “station,” and had a solitary walk along the empty, muddy lanes, back to the Transport Farm.

Plodding along in the thin rain that was falling I thought of home, London, England, and then of the job before me.  Another three months at least before any further chance of leave could come my way again.  Evening was coming on.  Across the flat, sombre country I could see the tall, swaying poplar trees standing near the farm.  Beyond lay the rough and rugged road which led to the Douve trenches.