Roll on till my time is up
And I shall march no more.


We sung it to the tune of "Holy, Holy, Holy", the whole blooming
battalion. As we swung down the Boulevard Alsace-Lorraine in Amiens
and passed the great cathedral up there to the left, on its little
rise of ground, the chant lifted and lilted and throbbed up from
near a thousand throats, much as the unisoned devotions of the
olden monks must have done in other days.

Ours was a holy cause, but despite the association of the tune the
song was far from being a holy song. It was, rather, a chanted
remonstrance against all hiking and against this one in
particular.

After our service at Vimy Ridge some one in authority somewhere
decided that the 22nd Battalion and two others were not quite good
enough for really smart work. We were, indeed, hard. But not hard
enough. So some superior intellect squatting somewhere in the
safety of the rear, with a finger on the pulse of the army, decreed
that we were to get not only hard but tough; and to that end we
were to hike. Hike we did.

For more than three weeks we went from place to place with no
apparent destination, wandering aimlessly up and down the
country-side of Northern France, imposing ourselves upon the people
of little villages, shamming battle over their cultivated fields,
and sleeping in their hen coops.