I remember Chatham as a place of heat, intolerable dirt, and a bad sore throat.  There we made our first acquaintance with the army, which we undergraduates had derided as a crowd of slavish wastrels and empty-headed slackers.  We met with tact and courtesy from the mercenary.  A sergeant of the Sappers we discovered to be as fine a type of man as any in the wide earth.  And we marvelled, too, at the smoothness of organisation, the lack of confusing hurry....

We were to start early on Monday morning.  My mother and sister rushed down to Chatham, and my sister has urgently requested me to mention in “the book” that she carried, with much labour, a large and heavy pair of ski-ing boots.  Most of the others had enlisted like myself in a hurry.  They did not see “their people” until December.

All of us were made to write our names in the visitors’ book, for, as the waiter said—­

“They ain’t nobodies now, but in these ’ere times yer never knows what they may be.”

Then, when we had gone in an ear-breaking splutter of exhausts, he turned to comfort my mother—­

“Pore young fellers!  Pore young fellers!  I wonder if any of ’em will return.”

That damp chilly morning I was very sleepy and rather frightened at the new things I was going to do.  I imagined war as a desperate continuous series of battles, in which I should ride along the trenches picturesquely haloed with bursting shell, varied by innumerable encounters with Uhlans, or solitary forest rides and immense tiring treks over deserted country to distant armies.  I wasn’t quite sure I liked the idea of it all.  But the sharp morning air, the interest in training a new motor-cycle in the way it should go, the unexpected popping-up and grotesque salutes of wee gnome-like Boy Scouts, soon made me forget the war.  A series of the kind of little breakdowns you always have in a collection of new bikes delayed us considerably, and only a race over greasy setts through the southern suburbs, over Waterloo Bridge and across the Strand, brought us to Euston just as the boat-train was timed to start.  In the importance of our new uniforms we stopped it, of course, and rode joyfully from one end of the platform to the other, much to the agitation of the guard, while I posed delightfully against a bookstall to be photographed by a patriotic governess.

Very grimy we sat down to a marvellous breakfast, and passed the time reading magazines and discussing the length of the war.  We put it at from three to six weeks.  At Holyhead we carefully took our bikes aboard, and settled down to a cold voyage.  We were all a trifle apprehensive at our lack of escort, for then, you will remember, it had not yet been proved how innocuous the German fleet is in our own seas.[1]