Fakenham which proved to be our final resting place in England. By now
our training had so far advanced that we were not kept at it quite so
hard, and we had more time for sports. We had polo, cricket, and all
kinds of games, and on 3rd June mounted sports which were most
successful.

We spent the summer putting on the finishing touches, and did some
very useful bits of training, including some fairly ambitious schemes
of trench digging and planning, which proved invaluable later on, and
which was a branch of knowledge in which many Yeomanries were
conspicuously lacking. Also, by this time, a few courses of
instruction had been started at the larger military centres, and we
had several officers and men trained at these courses in musketry and
other branches who were then able to pass their information on to the
rest of us. We were given an army gymnastic instructor who brushed up
our physical training--on which we had always been very keen--and also
started to put us through a thorough course of bayonet fighting. There
was also a busy time among our machine gunners, who trained spare
teams up to nearly three times our establishment, which was
invaluable, as it enabled us to take advantage of the chance which
came to us of going abroad with six machine guns per regiment instead
of three. As our usual role on Gallipoli was to take over with three
squadrons, whose effective strength was never more than 100 each at
the most, and generally considerably less, from four companies of
infantry, each numbering anything from 150 to 180 strong, these extra
machine guns were worth their weight in gold.

By this time a good many were thoroughly "fed up" with so long a spell
of home service, fearing that the war would be over before we got out
at all. And it was not till nearly the end of August that we got