wire: "Lieutenant Bairnsfather to proceed to join his battalion as
machine-gun officer...."

"What time do I have to push off?" I inquired.

"By the eight o'clock from Havre to-morrow, sir."

Time now 3 a.m. To-morrow--THE FRONT! And then I crept into my tent and
tried to sleep.




CHAPTER II

TORTUOUS TRAVELLING--CLIPPERS AND
TABLETS--DUMPED AT A SIDING--I JOIN
MY BATTALION


Not much sleep that night, a sort of feverish coma instead: wild dreams
in which I and the gendarme were attacking a German trench, the officer
in charge of which we found to be the Base Camp Adjutant after all.

However, I got up early--packed my few belongings in my valise, which
had mysteriously turned up from the docks, and went off on the tram down
to Havre. That hundred men I had brought over had nothing to do with me
now. I was entirely on my own, and was off to the Front to join my
battalion. Down at Havre the officials at the station gave me a
complicated yellow diagram, known as a travelling pass, and I got into a