"Good-bye, and good luck" to our sailors (It's a big debt we owe you to-day), "Good-bye, and good luck" to our soldiers (Some day we shall hope to repay). Though anxious the hearts left behind you, And a tear from the eye seems to fall, Yet--"good-bye"--God be with you, "good luck attend you, "Good-bye, and good luck to you all"-- as the refrain of a popular song had it later. Impressions of those few hurried days are blurred. In a sense one had been through it all many times before. It differed but little from moving station or preparing for manoeuvres. And yet there was something of the glamour of an unknown future before one: an instinctive feeling that this was the end of soldiering as we had known it. Not that anyone dreamed of the war lasting beyond Christmas; there are no pessimists in the Army. We were all at school breaking up for the holidays, and I think that just about sums up the situation as we saw it at Aldershot. The unknown future was more on the lines of "Shall we get any skating?" "Will there be some good shows at the theatres?" "What sort of fun will the Pytchley give us?" "Shall I be able to get in the Hunt Ball?" And so one has little enough to say about the days of mobilisation and packing up. Besides, quite enough has already been written to satisfy an interested public. One little adventure, however, seems worth recording. It befell a certain Gunner captain who was detailed to conduct a draft of men from one unit to another. The yarn has the merit of being true in every particular. It may form a small chapter to itself. A TOURING COMPANY "Putting two and two together," said the A.S.C. major, "I imagine that you're to take this draft on to Portsmouth and hand over to the O.C. of the company down there." Why a Gunner captain should have to conduct a draft of Field Gunners to a place like Portsmouth and hand them over to the tender mercies of an A.S.C. Company Commander, I couldn't imagine. Nor indeed why a Gunner should take his instructions from an A.S.C. major at all. But the Divisional C.R.A. had sent me up to him with the remark, "It looks as though you ought to report there," and that was all about it. Mobilisation is responsible for a good many queer happenings, and here at Aldershot on the third day of it most men were rather at sea. Even in those few hours one had learned not to ask questions. There was no objection to the asking, but the answer was usually a vacant, far-away look over the shoulder and "Eenteenth Brigade Office? Oh, it's over there"; and a wave of the arm would comprehensively include Farnborough, Deepcut and the Town Station.