“Never mind those things, old man,” they would say.  “Just tell me who you are, and how many.  That’s right:  now I know all about you.  Got your working parties fixed up?  Good!  They ought to have everything cleared in a couple of hours.  I’ll see that a ration of hot tea is served out for them.  Your train starts at a quarter past seven this evening—­remember to call it nineteen-fifteen, by the way, in this country—­and you ought to be at the station an hour before the time.  I’ll send you a guide.  What a fine-looking lot these chaps of yours are!  Best lot I’ve seen here for a very long time.  Working like niggers, too!  Now come along with me for ten minutes and I’ll show you where to get a bite of breakfast.  Expect you can do with a bit!”

That is Brass-Hat Jekyll—­officer and gentleman; and, to the eternal credit of the British Army, be it said that he abounds in this well-conducted campaign.  As an instance of his efficiency, let the case of our own regiment be quoted.  The main body travelled here by one route, the transport, horses, and other details by another.  The main body duly landed, and were conveyed to the rendezvous—­a distant railway junction in Northern France.  There they sat down to await the arrival of the train containing the other party; which had left England many hours before them, had landed at a different port, and had not been seen or heard of since.

They had to wait exactly ten minutes!

“Some Staff—­what?” as the Adjutant observed, as the train lumbered into view.

II

Most of us, in our travels abroad, have observed the closed trucks which are employed upon French railways, and which bear the legend—­

  Hommes.... 40
  Chevaux.... 8

Doubtless we have wondered, idly enough, what it must feel like to be one of the forty hommes.  Well, now we know.

When we landed, we were packed into a train composed of fifty such trucks, and were drawn by a mighty engine for a day and a night across the pleasant land of France.  Every six hours or so we were indulged with a Halte Repas.  That is to say, the train drew up in a siding, where an officer with R.T.O. upon his arm made us welcome, and informed us that hot water was available for taking tea.  Everybody had two days’ rations in his haversack, so a large-scale picnic followed.  From the horse-trucks emerged stolid individuals with canvas buckets—­you require to be fairly stolid to pass the night in a closed box, moving at twenty miles an hour, in company with eight riotous and insecurely tethered mules—­to draw water from the hydrant which supplied the locomotives.  The infant population gathered round, and besought us for “souvenirs,” the most popular taking the form of “biskeet” or “bully-boeuf.”  Both were given freely:  with but little persuasion our open-handed warriors would have fain squandered their sacred “emergency ration” upon these rapacious infants.