Training was in full swing by the end of September, 1914, the 107th Brigade being at Ballykinlar, the 108th at Clandeboye and Newtownards, and the 109th at Finner; where the accommodation consisted at this early date almost entirely of tents. By good chance the weather of the first three weeks of October was fine and mild, but thereafter, and before the hutting was completed, a very wet and severe winter set in. The U.V.F. training was a great advantage. It was easy to handle bodies of men, the most ignorant of whom could at least number, form fours, march in step, and keep alignment from the first. And the old organization held till it could be replaced by the new. As one Commanding Officer writes: "The U.V.F. officers and N.C.O.'s kept the men in order till we straightened out into the regular army formation." The enthusiasm of the men of those days of 1914 is something that no officer who served with them can ever forget; something perhaps, also, that none but those officers who began their training in the first six months of the war ever witnessed. There is a slow-burning flame in the Ulster blood that keeps her sons, once raised to the passion of great endeavour, at a high and steady pitch of resolution. They took their work with extraordinary seriousness. They were all anxiety to learn. They made their platoon commanders, beginners for the most part like themselves, struggle to keep ahead of them in the art that both were acquiring. How many of the junior officers must remember those "conferences" of sergeants and section leaders after parade hours and the circle of keen heads bent inward toward them; how many the "parades" on the mess table, matches for sections, inked on one side so that after many manœuvres the front rank might remain the front!