The railway journey of sixty hours to Pont Remy, near Abbéville, will not be forgotten. Men who had at much cost become acclimatized to the intense heat and dryness of the Sinai Desert, were suddenly plunged into the opposite extreme of an arctic climate. The winter of 1917 was one of the most prolonged and severe on record, and throughout the tedious journey in French troop-trains the men shivered and trembled with the bitter cold. But if France greeted them freezingly there was no mistaking the warmth of the welcome of her sons and daughters. Wherever the trains stopped the inhabitants gathered round to cheer them on their way. The news of the fall of Bagdad had preceded them, and the French women and girls, old men and children, knew that these were victorious British reinforcements from the East, and Bagdad and Sinai were equally remote. The troops detrained at Pont Remy in a storm of snow and sleet, and marched through deep, freezing slush to the villages in which billets had been prepared. After six months’ experience of open bivouacs wherever the day’s trek ended, the barn billets were something of a novelty. Reorganization and re-equipment were, of course, the most urgent matters to be dealt with, and the refit was carried out expeditiously. The short Lee-Enfield rifle displaced the longer rifle with which the Division had been armed; and the issue of two strange items, the “tin hat” and the box respirator, provoked some hilarity. Baths, each capable of washing sixty men per hour, were erected by the R.E., and henceforward the Division left its mark in the shape of new or remodelled baths in every area in which it was located. The Divisional Cinematograph and Canteen were also inaugurated here. The last troops from Egypt, the 5th East Lancashires and the 9th Manchesters, arrived on March 15. A new Divisional Train joined from England. This train had already had considerable experience of France, as it had been formed to join the Lahore Division in September 1914. Motor ambulances were supplied to the three Field Ambulances, and a complete train of motor-lorries was attached to the Division. The 42nd Divisional Ammunition Column was formed from a nucleus of the former Brigade Ammunition Columns with the addition of a large draft from the R.A. Base in France. A Heavy (9·45-inch) Trench Mortar Battery and three Medium (6-inch) T.M. Batteries were also formed here, and these became a part of the Divisional Artillery. Three Light T.M. Batteries were attached to the Infantry Brigades. [Sidenote: _General Douglas’s Farewell_]