Names that were as yet unfamiliar to the world at large were dear to it
as the last resting-places of its comrades of long ago--names such as
Dunkirk and Dixmude, Furnes and Ypres, Saberne and Bar-le-Duc. Hepburn's
Regiment had fought over every foot of the ground on which it was now to
share the waging of the greatest of all campaigns. Dumbarton's Drums
were once more beating their way through Europe to the making of
history. The trust of Gustavus Adolphus and Turenne, of Marlborough and
Wellington, marched with them as the promise of victory; and from the
old Royals, dustily climbing the cobbled street, spoke all the glamour
of 'age-kept victories.'

France was a smiling land in those days, for the sun shone in the hearts
of Frenchwomen as the rumour of war rose from the anxiously expected
British columns and drifted across the shining August fields. The 2nd
battalion--the 1st was still in India--tramped cheerily on its way. To
no one then was there revealed that dreary vista of trenches that was to
be war to the mind of the modern soldier.


II

_The First Shock of War_

Mons and the 23rd of August saw The Royals in action. With other
battalions they occupied the Mons salient, actually the point on which
the torrent of war first broke and for a brief moment spent itself. On
that still night it seemed to hang suspended as a great wave does
before falling. As the battalion lay in the shallow trench the pregnant
silence was at last broken by the high, clear call of a bugle, one
single long note, indescribably eerie and menacing, and then the