Their three weeks’ training came to an end on the 11th November, when they moved thirteen miles, in torrents of rain, to the village of Ecques, which was filled with Portuguese troops, and began a long march. They did not know their destination, but guessed well where they were going. Some had all the reasons in the world to know that the Division would relieve the French on half a dozen different named sectors. Others were certain that it would attack independently quite elsewhere. Even Italy, where the Caporetto disaster had just taken place, was to the imaginative quite within the bounds of luck. But their line of route--twelve or thirteen miles a day in fine weather--dropped always south and east. From Ecques it crossed the Lys at Thérouanne; held over the worn road between St. Pol and Béthune, till, at Magnicourt-le-Comte, came orders that all kits were to be reduced and sent in to St. Pol. Elaborate reasons were given for this, such as lack of transport owing to troops being hurried to Italy, which dissipated the idea of light wines and macaroni entertained by the optimists, and deceived no one. If they turned left when they struck the St. Pol-Arras road, it would not be the French whom they were relieving. If they held on south, it would be the old Somme ground. And they held on south to Beaufort, marching by daylight, till the 18th of October found them in a camp of huts outside Blaireville and well in the zone of aeroplane observation. They moved under cover of darkness that night to a camp of tents at Gomiecourt between wrecked Bapaume and battered Arras. The bare devastated downs of the Somme had taken them back again, and they were in the Fifth Corps, Third (Julian Byng’s) Army. It was revealed at Divisional Headquarters conference on the night of the 19th that that army was on the eve of attack. There would be no preliminary bombardments, but an outrush of tanks, with a dozen infantry divisions on a six-mile front from Gonnelieu to the Canal du Nord near Hermies.