the station gave me a
complicated yellow diagram, known as a travelling pass, and I got into a
carriage in the train bound for Rouen.

I was not alone now; a whole forest of second lieutenants like myself
were in the same train, and with them a solid, congealed mass of
valises, packs, revolvers and haversacks. At last the train started, and
after the usual hour spent in feeling that you have left all the most
important things behind, I settled down on a mound of equipment and
tried to do a bit of a sleep.

So what with sleeping, smoking and talking, we jolted along until we
pulled up at Rouen. Here I had to leave the train, for some obscure
reason, in order to go to the Palais de Justice to get another ticket. I
padded off down over the bridge into Rouen, found the Palais, went in
and was shown along to an office that dealt in tickets.

In this dark and dingy oak-panelled saloon, illuminated by electric
light and the glittering reflections from gold braid, there lurked a
general or two. I was here given another pass entitling me to be
deposited at a certain siding in Flanders.

Back I went to the station, and in due course rattled off in the train
again towards the North.

A fearfully long journey we had, up to the Front! The worst of it was
that nobody knew--or, if they did, wouldn't tell you--which way you
were going, or how long it would take to get to your destination. For
instance, we didn't know we were going to Rouen till we got there; and
we didn't know we were going from Rouen to Boulogne until, after a night
spent in the train, the whole outfit jolted and jangled into the Gare de
Something, down by the wharf at that salubrious seaport.

We spent a complete day and part of an evening at Boulogne, as our train
did not leave until midnight.

[Illustration: having a smoke]

I and another chap who was going to the next railhead to mine at the
Front, went off together into the town and had lunch at a cafe in the
High Street. We then strolled around the shops, buying a few things we
needed. Not very attractive things either, but I'll mention them here to
show how we thought and felt.

We first went to a "pharmacie" and got some boxes of morphia tablets,
after which we went to an ironmonger's (don't know the French for it)
and each bought a ponderous pair of barbed wire cutters. So what with
wire clippers and morphia tablets, we _were_ gay. About four o'clock we
calmed down a bit, and went to the same resta