Everybody had his job, and nobody knew what anyone else was doing. Right at the beginning we experienced a curious feeling of secrecy. You would see an officer at lunch and miss him at dinner. "Oh yes! I believe he has gone this afternoon," someone remarks. "When are you off?" Colonel X. would say to an officer in a moment of forgetfulness, hastily adding, "No, I don't want to know--but, mind you pay your mess bill before you go." This secrecy of movement was certainly the most striking feature of those early days: that, and the splendid organisation. We have got accustomed to it since, but at the time, and to men used to the happy-go-lucky methods of this dear, lovable, muddle-headed old country of ours, that organisation struck one as amazing. On August 5th every C.O. was handed a file of documents. In these were given the most precise directions as to times, places and dates when his unit was to leave Aldershot. For instance: "Train No. 463Y will arrive at siding B at 12.35 A.M., August 10th. "You will complete loading by 3.40 A.M. "This train will leave siding C at 9.45 A.M., August 10th. "You will march on to the platform at 9.30 A.M. and complete your entraining by 9.40." And I believe it is a fact that every train left five minutes ahead of its scheduled time. The London and South Western Railway was given sixty hours in which to send to Southampton 350 troop-trains. They did it in forty-five hours. "Some" hustle! The astonishing efficiency of it all, and the admirable co-operation between military and civil authorities. I very much doubt if there were more than two officers of the Staff at Aldershot H.Q. who knew details of the intended movements. Fritz must have been annoyed. C.O.'s, and other individual officers, who knew when their own unit was timed for departure, entered splendidly into the spirit of the game and loyally kept the information to themselves; would not even tell their people, nor their best girls. One day the King came down. The visit was as secret as everything else. Each unit received about a quarter of an hour's warning of His Majesty's approach, and the men turned out of their tents or broke off their work to line up by the road. A few words of "good-bye, and good luck" to the men, a warm hand-clasp to the officers, three cheers, and the Royal car slipped forward to the next unit. One could hear the ripple of cheering flow round the camps as His Majesty passed. By the way, it is a little curious how, from the very beginning, there have been just three words used by everyone in bidding "good-bye." "Good-bye, and good luck." A kind of spontaneous, universal formula. Officers used it, the men, mothers, wives and sweethearts.