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[Page 5]
waterproof sheet and overcoat rolled round your full pack which is on your back. Rifle, 2 gas helmets, gas goggles, "tin" hat (which isn't light), entrenching tools, water bottle, haversack, bayonet, swing all around you, not to mention 150 rounds of ammunition, and if near the firing line, 2 bombs - It shames a mule!
Our train journey passed through Hazebrouck, St. Omer and some towns familiar to War history, but night soon coming on, hid the landscape from me. Travelling all night in box wagons, entertained or otherwise by drunken Scotch Australian and shivering with the cold draught, we finally reached in the early hours of the morning a town, which I think must have been Longpre after scattering the intervening miles with the inevitable bully-beef tin, scraps of biscuits and sundry other things!
It was at this place that the beautiful sunny weather we had experienced first deserted us, and during all our stay on the Somme it rained continuously, sometimes with tropical intensity. We descended into the drizzling rain ankle deep in mud. I thought the latter awful (O Youth!). It was pitch dark but brightened considerably when we had gone some miles and I was able to see the surrounding country. After the inevitable "standing easy" we marched off, various rumours having it that we were going 5, 10 & 20 Kilometers. It turned out to be 15, which is about 11 miles, but when somewhere about half-way and at intervals, I heard some wag telling his neighbour the cheerful news that the last 25 Kilometers was always the worst, with the same cheerful brightness that the last 10 years of the War were usually the worst!
On this march we crossed the marshes of the river Somme on its lower reaches and from the eminence we had climbed by a long tortuous road we could see it spread out before us in misty broads.
One little village we passed on the march in the cleft of a hill facing a stream, resembled a Swiss village and there were some pretty chateaux.
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