The transports _Megantic_, _Oriana_, _Scotian_, and _Tintoretto_, carrying the Brigade, left Alexandria between the 13th and 15th of April, and reached Marseilles during the night of the 19th, about the same time as the Russian division dispatched to the aid of France from Vladivostok. Owing to a case of contagious sickness on board the _Oriana_, the 4th Regiment and part of the 1st were placed in quarantine, while the remainder of the troops entrained at once for Flanders. Steenwerck was reached on the morning of the 23rd, and the 2nd and 3rd Regiments marched to their billeting area along roads wholly under water. It was the first sight which the South Africans had of the delectable land in which for four years the British Army made war. Headquarters were established at Bailleul, and the Brigade was attached to the 9th (Scottish) Division, under Major-General W. T. Furse. For three weeks detachments of the two regiments took their place in the trenches for instruction, and on 11th May the 4th Regiment and the rest of the 1st arrived from their quarantine at Marseilles. On 14th May the 28th Brigade of the 9th Division disappeared, being absorbed in other divisions, and the South African Brigade took its place in the fighting unit to whose glory it was so worthily to contribute.[9] The 9th Division belonged to the “First Hundred Thousand” of the New Army, and at the start was wholly Scottish. The famous Scottish battalions of the old regulars had drawn their men from every quarter of Britain; but the 9th Division had few in its ranks who did not hail from north of the Tweed. It had already made a name for itself at Loos, where, under Major-General George Thesiger, who fell in the battle, it had captured the Hohenzollern Redoubt and the ill-omened Fosse 8, and held the latter till it was utterly outflanked. It had fought in the toughest part of the whole line, and all the troops, Highland and Lowland, had borne themselves like veterans. The division had spent the winter in the Ypres salient as part of Sir Herbert Plumer’s Second Army, and during the spring had occupied the front around Armentières. It was a proof of the respect in which the South African Brigade was held by the British Command that it should be made part of so notable a division; and it was not less fortunate for the 9th Division that it received a brigade so competent to sustain its record.