ng vans, bearing down on
them like a runaway house, people fled or took to the side roads.
Captain Rowland described with great glee the sensation it had caused,
and his enjoyment of that drive.

That was the first mobile laboratory, the beginning of the field
laboratories and the model upon which all others were constructed. The
list of equipment prepared and used by Captain Rowland was also used
as the basis for the requirements for all mobile laboratories
subsequently equipped. A second bacteriological laboratory and two
hygiene laboratories were sent out before permission was obtained from
the Director of the Canadian Medical Service, to send out a Canadian
laboratory. For some unexplained reason the Canadian Government
refused the necessary funds for the chassis so that we were compelled
to pack our equipment in twenty-four numbered cases, all of which
could be carried on a three-ton motor lorry. I had discovered that the
officers in charge of these laboratories at the front had already
found them too small to work in comfortably, and had removed and
placed the equipment in some convenient house, using the lorry merely
to carry their equipment. We were able to carry twice as complete an
equipment, costing altogether less than $2,000 in a borrowed lorry,
and saved the cost of $10,000 for the motor chassis.

When the first Canadian Division went to France, No. 1 Canadian
General Hospital had been left behind on Salisbury Plain, to take care
of the sick. It had been decided that I was to go to France in command
of the Canadian Mobile Laboratory, and that I should take with me two
officers and several men from the staff of that hospital. The Lozier
car which had been given me by the Canadian Government was also to go
as part of the equipment. After working in the office of the Director
of Medical Services for a couple of weeks straightening out the
records in regard to typhoid inoculation, and cerebro-spinal
meningitis, and in purchasing the necessary equipment, I received word
that the laboratory was to go to the front immediately. The
Surgeon-General accordingly made all the necessary arrangements, and
left for France, while I went down to Bulford to wait for the expected
telegram which was to speed us on our way.

We waited over three weeks for the message, growing more and more
desperate every day. Finally we went up to London and found that
somebody had made a mistake and that we were supposed to be in France