I squeezed out the same old sentence: "Pour Bléville, Monsieur?" A fearful cataract of unintelligible words burst from the head, but left me almost as much in the dark as ever, though with a faint glimmering that I was "warmer." I felt that if I went back about a mile and turned to the left, all would be well. I thanked the gollywog in the window, who, somehow or other, I think must have been a printer working late, and started off once more. After another hour's route march I came to some scattered houses, and finally to a village. I was indignantly staring at a house when suddenly, joy!--I realized that what I was looking at was an unfamiliar view of the café where I had breakfasted earlier in the day. Another ten minutes and I reached the Camp. Time now 2.30 a.m. I thought I would just take a look in at the Orderly Room tent to see if there were any orders in for me. It was lucky I did. Inside I found an orderly asleep in a blanket, and woke him. "Anything in for me?" I asked. "Bairnsfather's my name." "Yes, sir, there is," came through the blanket, and getting up he went to the table at the other end of the tent. He sleepily handed me the wire: "Lieutenant Bairnsfather to proceed to join his battalion as machine-gun officer...." "What time do I have to push off?" I inquired. "By the eight o'clock from Havre to-morrow, sir." Time now 3 a.m. To-morrow--THE FRONT! And then I crept into my tent and tried to sleep. CHAPTER II TORTUOUS TRAVELLING--CLIPPERS AND TABLETS--DUMPED AT A SIDING--I JOIN MY BATTALION Not much sleep that night, a sort of feverish coma instead: wild dreams in which I and the gendarme were attacking a German trench, the officer in charge of which we found to be the Base Camp Adjutant after all. However, I got up early--packed my few belongings in my valise, which had mysteriously turned up from the docks, and went off on the tram down to Havre. That hundred men I had brought over had nothing to do with me now. I was entirely on my own, and was off to the Front to join my battalion. Down at Havre the officials at 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.