talion's marching rallies....

Following a brief rest the 29th Division trained, from Poperinghe
southwards. The same weary cooping in cattle-trucks, same monotonous
crawl. And yet during a halt at Hazebrucke arose one of those moments
that live long in memory, when patriotism rises high in the breast. The
station was crowded with soldiers and civilians as the Guernseys' train
drew up in the cool, dusky evening light. Someone played a cornet: "The
long, long trail." From end to end of the train the Ten Hundred caught
it up and sang low in their soft southern accent. A hush fell on the
chattering onlookers, they turned and stared. The harmony enveloped
them, stirred them ... and we, ah, how the blood stirs even now. But the
memory saddens--for the voices of many are for ever still.

II

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1917

HENDECOURT

The mad rattle of strife in Belgium had throbbed on the ear-drums
incessantly day and night, but on the frontage beyond Hendecourt and
Arras little more than an occasional "Verey" light from the Fritz line
played hesitatingly on the grotesque landscape. Even the guns were
silent: the crack of a rifle-shot or far-off splutters from machine-guns
were the only sounds to mingle with the harsh jumbled tread of the Royal
Guernseys marching over cobbles and bad roads to the encampment of iron
huts.

The going from Beaumetz, through shell-shattered villages, by roads
twisting up and down long hills, commenced to tell on the men long
before the first halt was due. Breathing became, in many cases, long and
heavy; some stumbled blindly forward with heads strained down, and
others impotently cursed at the Higher Command for not calling a halt.
Sweat trickled over dust-begrimed countenances, feet were aching, the
tongue clove parched to the mouth, the pack ... oh, the utter hell of
it. And yet on the morrow you forgot!

On territory recaptured (during March, 1917) from Fritz and within a few
hundred yards of his original reserve line, still intact and heavily
protected with barbed wire, was the conglomeration of huts that formed
for nearly three weeks the home of the Ten Hundred.

The Infantryman sees far more of the trenches than of Rest Camps, and
therefore what precious days of absence from the joys of water-logged
dug-outs comes his way are seized upon and lived to the very full. The
Normans had not experienced very much--but they had had quite enough.
Ginger Le Ray, basking his fair unshaven