The three field ambulances, having completed nine months of hard training at Aldershot, often under most unpleasant conditions, joined the Division on Salisbury Plain in June. Meanwhile the transport and equipment of units were being completed, and everything pointed to an early departure. The Division was finally inspected by the King towards the end of June, and a month later embarked for France. CHAPTER II THE LAVENTIE SECTOR _20th July 1915 to 21st January 1916_ Arrival of the Division in France--Further training in trench warfare--The Division in the Laventie Sector--Operations in conjunction with the Battle of Loos--Raid--Gas attack--Move out of IIIrd Corps Area. (_Vide_ Sketch A.) The leading units of the Division left Amesbury on the 20th July. The route followed was either by Folkestone and Boulogne or by Southampton and Havre, and then by train from the ports of disembarkation to the area west of St Omer. The various stages of the journey--embarking men and horses, entraining and detraining in France, marches to rest camps and billets--were all accomplished satisfactorily if not without some discomfort, chiefly due to the rough and rainy weather. On the 22nd Divisional Headquarters was established at Lumbres, and the Division was concentrated in this area by the 26th. The next day orders came for a further move eastwards, and on the 28th the Division started on a hot and trying march into the area of the IIIrd Corps (Lieut.-General Sir W. P. Pulteney), which formed part of the First Army and which was holding a line between Neuve Chapelle and Armentières. By the 30th the various units had moved into billets in the area bounded roughly by the line Hazebrouck--Bailleul--Steenwerck--Neuf Berquin, with Divisional Headquarters at Merris. The situation on the British front at this time was briefly as follows:-- The Third Army under Sir Charles Munro held the right of the line from the Somme, where it was in touch with the French, to a point south of Arras. Between this point and Grenay (four miles north-west of Lens) the French Tenth Army intervened, cutting off the Third Army from the First, which, under Sir Douglas Haig, continued the line to near Armentières; north again, Sir Herbert Plumer’s Second Army held the left of the British line as far as the right of the French troops at Boesinghe.