Then there was that long, almost never ending train ride, which seemed to be taking me on an unbearable distance from the place I really felt I belonged. And the arrival; all I saw when I tumbled off the train were thousands of unpainted buildings and millions of fellows in khaki, and every one of them had a fiendish grin on his face as he shouted: “Oh, you rookey. Wait, just wait; you’ll get yours! When they bring on the needle. Oh, the needle.” I had a vague idea of what the “needle” might be, but it wasn’t pleasant to hear about it from every one I met. But I guess there were a lot of fellows who were not quite certain what this threatening “needle” was. Foolishly two of them asked one of the Sergeants who met us at the train and what they heard in reply to their queries made them paler than they were before, if that were possible. Thereafter, for the rest of the afternoon and evening, the “needle” was the subject of earnest conversation among us all, and the doubts and misgivings about that instrument of torture, coupled with a thoroughly good case of homesickness on the part of every one of us helped to make a pleasant (?) evening. And that most of us worried until far into the night is certain. I know I did, and the Italian on my left cried himself to sleep, and didn’t try to hide his unhappiness either. Oh, it was a delightful evening, all things considered. Forty-seven of us, all from my own district, came down together, and while we remained in one group there was a measure of consolation to be had for us all. But our hopes that we would stay together at camp were dashed immediately we got off the train. In fact we were so thoroughly split up that I managed to get into a squad composed entirely of foreigners, and I’m still with them. But the prospects of a change are excellent. Quite as docile as sheep, and just as ignorant, we were marched down one camp street after another. My friends of foreign extraction, with due regard for anything that looked like a uniform, saluted every one that passed, and they were tolerably busy until we were halted outside of our present abode, a big two-story, unpainted barracks building.