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