stream of wet slowly trickling along underneath the tent-walls towards
the tent-pole, and by night time we were lying and sitting in a pool
of mud.

About a week later when the sergeant-major told us on parade that we
were "going to Tipperary" we all laughed, and no one believed it.

But the next day they marched us down to the Government siding and
locked us all in a train, which took us right away to Fishguard.

Some of the men got some bread-and-cheese before starting, but I, in
company with a good many others, did not.

The boat was waiting when they bundled us out on the quay.

It was a cattle-boat and very small and very smelly. There were no
cabins or accommodation of any sort: only the cattle-stalls down
below. Six hundred of us got aboard. Out of the six hundred, five
hundred were sick. It was a very rough crossing, and we were all
starving and shivering. I had nothing but what I stood up in--shirt,
shorts, and cowboy-hat, and my old haversack, which contained soap,
towel and razor, and also a sketch-book and a small colour-box.

The Irish sea-winds whistled up my shorts-- but I preferred the icy
wind to the stinking cattle-stalls and insect-infested straw below. We
were packed in like sardines. Men were retching and groaning, cussing
and growling. At last I found a coil of rope. It was a huge coil with
a hole in the centre--something like a large bird's nest. I got into
this hole and curled up like a dormouse. Here I did not feel the cold
so much, and lying down I didn't feel sick. The moon glittered on the