For months we had drilled and drilled, all earnest in our labours and filled with enthusiasm for our new profession, and daily we await the order to leave for foreign parts.  Where are we going to when we leave England?  France, Egypt, or India?  Rumour had it yesterday that we would go to Egypt; to-day my mate, the blue-eyed Jersey youth, heard from a friend, who heard it from a colour-sergeant, that we are going out to India, where we will be kept as guardians of the King’s Empire for a matter of four years.  Ever since I joined the Army it has been the same:  reports name a new destination for my battalion daily.

Afterwards we had to go and help the remarkable Russians who passed through England on the way to France; but when the Russians faded from the ken of vision and the Press Bureau denied their very existence, it was immediately reported that we had been drilled into shape in order to demolish De Wet and all his South African rebels.  De Wet was captured and is now under military control, and still we waited orders to move from the comfortable billets and crowded streets of our town.  Dry eyes would see us depart, mocking children would bid us sarcastic farewells, the kindly landladies and their fair daughters would laugh when we bade adieu and moved away to some destination unknown.  We had already taken our farewell three times, and on each occasion we have come back again to our billets before the day that saw our departure came to an end.

The heart of every man thrilled with excitement when the announcement was made for the first time, one weary evening when we had just completed a ten-hour divisional field exercise.  Our officer read it from a typewritten sheet, and the announcement was as follows: 

“All men in the battalion must stand under arms until further orders.  No soldier is to leave his billet; boots are not to be taken off, and best marching pairs are to be worn.  Every unit of the company who lacks any part of the necessary equipment must immediately report at quartermaster’s stores, where all wants will be supplied.  Identity discs to be worn, swords must be cleaned and polished, and twenty-four hours’ haversack rations are to be carried.  The battalion has to entrain for some unknown destination when called upon.”

The news spread through the town:  the division was going to move!  On the morrow we would be sailing for France, in a fortnight we would be in Berlin!  Our landladies met us at the doors as we came in, looks of entreaty on their faces and tears in their eyes.  The hour had come; we were going to leave them.  And the landladies’ daughters?  One, a buxom wench of eighteen, kissed the Jersey youth in sight of the whole battalion, but nobody took any notice of the unusual incident.  All were busy with their own thoughts, and eager for the new adventures before them.

I did not go to sleep that night; booted and dressed I lay on the hearthrug in front of the fire, and waited for the call.  About four o’clock in the morning a whistle was blown outside on the street; I got to my feet, put on my equipment, fastened the buckles of my haversack, bade adieu to my friends of the billet who had risen from bed to see me off, and joined my company.