CHAPTER IX
GETTING READY TO GO
My second leave arrived. Being issued with a new uniform, my buttons and badges burnished as bright as elbow grease and metal paste could make them, I flattered myself I made a most soldierly figure as I stepped out with the rest, en route for Amesbury station. The major, knowing his boys, gave us a word of warning. He held forth on the nearness of the time when we would be wanted to hold the thin line over the channel. The warning was a hint to be back on time or results unpleasant would follow. This did not prevent me taking an extra day or so.
This was to be the last I saw of my people before embarking on the final stage of the game and the time passed all too quickly. On the day of my final leave-taking not one shadow of sorrow was portrayed on mother's face. On the contrary, she resorted to an old English custom that has been handed down for generations: after my last kiss and embrace she waved a cheery adieu and grabbing an old shoe that she had prepared for the moment she flung it after me with the time immemorial expression, "Good Luck and God-speed."
I held the tears back until I was well out of sight and then my pent-up feelings gave way and I let them freely flow. The memory of that farewell has supported me and given me strength to undergo what sometimes seems impossible when I look back over it all. My youngest sister, Edith, displayed the same bravery of spirit and maintained a brightness and a cheeriness which I well know she was far from feeling. Blessed indeed are we in our women and girls.
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[Illustration: THE REMAINS OF A ONCE PROSPEROUS VILLAGE]
The frightfulness of modern warfare is shown in this remarkable picture. The bare sticks were once graceful trees; the heaps of debris, beautiful homes.
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My return journey was in the company of another of the British-Canadians from my own village. At London we crammed ourselves into a carriage crowded with khaki-clad humanity, and a furious argument arose as to what constituted a real Canadian. Hot and hotter it grew until we steamed into the little depot, and it was only settled when a stalwart Canuck volunteered to knock hell out of any man in the whole damned army who said he wasn't a Canadian.
On arriving at the door of my former hut I found it barred and the boys inside told me to seek other quarters as the spinal meningitis had at last reached our abode. I entered the next hut and found it filled with my chums who had returned from leave, all feeling somewhat dismal, and we cast ourselves down wherever we could and dreamt about home till morning.
As before, my low spirits soon faded and I skipped about as usual. Now began a period of intensive training, chiefly bayonet practice. Musketry, route marching, bayonet fighting, and target practice all took up our time, and such games as football and baseball served to keep the men supple.
On New Year's eve we celebrated and the officers closed their eyes for awhile, and the men took full advantage of their temporary blindness. In our hut, story and song floated more or less musically into the mist outside. The evening finished with a speech from one huge fellow, which he insisted on making in spite of our protest, and to emphasize his oratorical points, he seized the object nearest to him which happened to be me, and taking me by the coat collar and the leg, he drove home his points by thumping me, rear end downward, on the table. That was another time in my life when the way of the small man was hard, and the trouble of it was the table was harder.
Although I suffered somewhat by reason of my short stature, nature evened things up by giving me a stamina which nothing seemed to hurt. In consequence, I was always chosen to be one of the party who paraded before the doctor every few days in order to show the doctor that there was nothing very seriously wrong with our battalion, because the men were afraid we would be left behind when the contingent went to France owing to the amount of sickness in our bunch.
Policemen, whether civil or military, are ever the abomination of a liberty loving soldiery and throughout the camp they were always on the lookout for offenders. However, on Salisbury Plain it was comparatively easy to avenge oneself on the M.P.'s. (military police). At night, after "Lights out" these officious guardians of the peace would be on the look-out for any of the boys who had stayed out too long, and who were dodging the sentries. On a stormy night, with their coat collars turned up to their ears and leaning against the storm, they would be walking on the chalk walks on each side of which stretched the sea of mud. The avenger usually prepared his attack by donning a pair of rubber boots, and stealing up behind the unsuspecting policeman until within a few feet of him, he would step off into the mud on the storm side of the M.P. and deliver a blow with all the pent-up feelings of an aggrieved soldier behind it and into the mud would topple the unlucky policeman. The Canadian idea of discipline had not yet become acclimated to the stern routine of the Imperial Army.