Presumably we had to move the guns and wagons with drag-ropes while the horses watched us, grinning into their nose bags. Anyhow, there we were, half the artillery in Greece, all eighteen-pounders, the other half and the infantry somewhere in the Dardanelles. It appeared, however, that the ---- Division had quite a lot of perfectly good infantry just up the road but their artillery hadn’t got enough horses to go round. So we made a sort of Jack Sprat and his wife arrangement and declared ourselves mobile. About four days after we’d come into camp the _Marquette_ was wrecked some thirty miles off Salonica. It had the ---- Divisional Ammunition Column on board and some nurses. They had an appalling time in the water and many were lost. The surviving officers, who came dressed in the most motley garments, poor devils, were split up amongst the brigade. On the Headquarters Staff we took to our bosoms a charming fellow who was almost immediately given the name of Woodbine,--jolly old Woodbine, one of the very best, whom we left behind with infinite regret while we went up country. I’d like to know what his golf handicap is these days. The political situation was apparently delicate. Greece was still sitting on the fence, waiting to see which way the cat would jump, and here were we and our Allies, the French, marching through their neutral country. Slight evidences of the “delicacy” of the times were afforded by the stabbing of some half dozen Tommies in the dark streets of the town and by the fact that it was only the goodly array of guns which prevented them from interning us. I don’t think we had any ammunition as yet, so we couldn’t have done very much. However that may be and whatever the political reasons, we sat on the roadside day after day, watching the French streaming up country,--infantry, field guns, mountain artillery and pack transport,--heedless of Tino and his protests. Six months in Egypt, and now this! We _were_ annoyed. However, on about the twentieth day things really happened. “Don” battery went off by train, their destination being some unpronounceable village near the firing line. We, the Headquarters Staff, and “AC” battery followed the next day. The railway followed the meanderings of the Vardar through fertile land of amazing greenness and passed mountains of stark rock where not even live oak grew. The weather was warm for November, but that ceaseless rain put a damper on everything, and when we finally arrived we found “Don” battery sitting gloomily in a swamp on the side of the road. We joined them. 7 The weather changed in the night and we were greeted with a glorious sunshine in the morning that not only dried our clothes but filled us with optimism.