“What a time to arrive!” I replied. But in war three forty-five is as good a time as any other, I was soon to discover.
We walked to a camp a mile distant from the station; our arrival seemed quite unlooked for, and a quartermaster-sergeant had to be procured, by the officer who was our guide, in order to gain access to the tent that contained the blanket stores. Wearily, at close on five o’clock, we fell asleep on the boarded bottom of a bell-tent.
It must have been about 10 a.m. on the 6th when we turned out and found ourselves in a sandy country; behind us was a small ridge, crowned by a belt of fir trees; the sun was well up and shone warm on the face as we washed and shaved in the open. The feeling of camp was exhilarating, and I was in good spirits.
But two blows immediately damped my ardour most effectively. When I learned that I was posted to our first battalion, and I alone of all of us twelve, the thought of my arrival among the regulars, with no experience, and not even an acquaintance, far less a friend, was distinctly chilling! To add to my discomfiture there befell a second misfortune: my valise was nowhere to be seen!
Indeed, the rest of the day was chiefly occupied in searching for my valise, but to no purpose whatever. I did not see it until ten days later, when by some miracle it appeared again! I can hardly convey the sense of depression these two facts cast over me the next few days; the interest and novelty of my experiences made me forget for short periods, but always there would return the thought of my arrival alone into a line regiment, and with the humiliating necessity of borrowing at once. Unknown and inexperienced I could not help being; but as a fool who lost all his property the first day, I should not cut a brilliant figure!
We obtained breakfast at an _estaminet_ by the station; omelettes, rolls and butter, and _café noir_. I bought a French newspaper, and thought how finely my French would improve under this daily necessity; but I soon found that one could get the Paris edition of the _Daily Mail_, and my French is still as sketchy as ever! I remember watching the French children and the French women at the doors of the houses, and wondering what they thought of this war on their own soil; I knew that the wild enthusiasms of a year ago had died down; I did not expect the shouting and singing, the souvenir-hunting, and the generous impulses that greeted our troops a year ago; but I felt so vividly myself the fact that between me and the Germans lay only a living wall of my own countrymen, that I could not help thinking these urchins and women must feel it too! The very way in which they swept the doorsteps seemed to me worth noting at the moment.