Early in December the rumour came that we were going for divisional training to the back areas. I would not believe it, having heard stories of this kind too often, and was surprised when it turned out to be true. Siegfried Sassoon, in his _Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man_, has described this battalion move. It was an even more laborious experience for our A Company than for his C Company. We got up at five o’clock one morning, breakfasted hastily, packed our kits, and marched down to the railhead three miles away. Here we had the task of entraining all the battalion stores, transport and transport-animals. This took us to the middle of the morning. We then entrained ourselves for a ten-hour journey to a junction on the Somme about twenty miles away from the front line. The officers travelled in third-class apartments, the men in closed trucks marked: ‘Hommes 40, chevaux 8’—they were very stiff when they arrived. ‘A’ Company was called on to do the detraining job too. When we had finished, the dixies of tea prepared for us were all cold. The other companies had been resting for a couple of hours; we had only a few minutes. The march was along _pavé_ roads and the rough chalk tracks of the Picardy downland. It started about midnight and finished about six o’clock next morning, the men carrying their packs and rifles. There was a competition between the companies as to which would have the fewest men falling out; A won. The village we finally arrived at was called Montagne le Fayel. No troops had been billeted here before, and its inhabitants were annoyed at being knocked up in the middle of the night by our advance-guard to provide accommodation for eight hundred men at two hours’ notice. We found these Picard peasants much more likeable than the Pas de Calais people. I was billeted with an old man called Monsieur Elie Caron, a retired schoolmaster with a bright eye and white hair. He lived entirely on vegetables, and gave me a vegetarian pamphlet entitled _Comment Vivre Cent Ans_. We already knew of the coming Somme offensive, so this was a good joke. He also gave me Longfellow’s _Evangeline_ in English. I have always been sorry for English books stranded in France, whatever their demerits; so I accepted it and later brought it home.