In August 1914 every Sahib gripped his sword when he thought of home, but in the Derajat Brigade the declaration of war did little more than recall its officers from leave, and they came back many hundreds of miles to look at the mountains, whose tribesmen only respect a frontier that is held against them by armed men, as frowning follies that kept them back from real war. September saw a Punjab regiment marching towards those dark hills to take over the Gumal outposts, and another regiment marched back on relief into the cantonment. Very early in October the great conflict levied its first contribution; some sepoys and sowars of a Sikh regiment and a cavalry regiment left Dera Ismail Khan as reinforcements for other corps; leaves from the tree blown by the breeze to the war’s whirlwind. But the cantonment still only stood sentry over the lawless of the frontier hills, nor could move to the war. Then, on October 11, a summons came, and ran along the wires to the Punjabis’ headquarters at Tank, and to Khajuri Kach, and Jandola, and the smaller outposts, that for the first time in the history of the frontier a regiment was to march away from the hills to war, to travel like the Indus to the sea, and cross the pathless ocean to the West. Now those birds of passage, the Sahibs, go home by that familiar waterway, but for the man of the Punjab it was a summons to ‘Active Service Overseas’ and a strange land. Yet death is the strangest land of all to both Sahibs and sepoys, and in its vast region lies the eternal home of every traveller, so that they faced the way to the unknown right gladly together, and the reservists hastened to join them. There were as many rumours as there were men in the ranks, and each rumour was an enemy. To the Dogras there was the suggestion of violated caste in foreign lands; to the Sikh the pleasant whisper that the Raj feared the Khalsa and was carting the Sikhs away in ships to sink them; to the Pathan the assertion that the German Emperor and his Army were of the Mahomedan faith. But little cared the sepoys in the outposts—where doubtless they knew of the order before their officers, for the wires whisper many things well understood by the babus e’er ever they give official utterance—as they made haste to hand over to the Mahomedan regiment that marched hot foot to relieve them, while a regiment from down-country was railed north with all speed to keep the frontier cantonment at full strength. The Punjab regiment tramped into Dera Ismail Khan in little brown detachments that crossed the wide pale desert to the jingle of mules and the rumble of transport carts, and encamped on a bare parade ground awaiting orders. The General commanding the Derajat Brigade had his orders by then for the great war, so that the cantonment knew yet one more change. The Punjab regiment was extraordinarily busy; all the paraphernalia wherewith each human being encumbers himself, multiplied by one thousand, had to be dealt with.