The platform was dense with khaki. Here and there one saw a frail old lady seeing her son off; there was a sprinkling of girls, who clung to their men’s arms and made a brave attempt to laugh. Then, before anything sincere had been done or said, everyone was taking his seat and the doors were being locked. There was no khaki on the platform now—only the drab of civilian costume, which made its wearers look like mourners. I leant out of the window. Suddenly one of my women friends, who had never done such a thing before, drew herself up by my hand and kissed me. The wheels began to revolve. “When you get there, keep your heads down,” the men on the platform called “Cheerio, old things,” we answered. The girls tried to say something, put their hands to their throats and choked. Their smiles became masks. Then we were out of the station, speeding past housetops, with the wheels singing triumphantly, “The Canadians will advance—advance—advance.” We were all Canadians in my carriage. We had all been wounded—some once, some oftener. “Well, we can’t get there too soon,” one said. To parade our assumed indifference, we began to play cards. Farther down the train, above the roar of our going, we could hear the cheery voices of the “other ranks” singing, “Good-bye-ee Don’t cry-ee Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee” We were trying to bluff it out to all the sleeping country that we didn’t care and rather liked dying. The base-port across the Channel at which we landed was in strange contrast to London’s haggard smiling. It not only did not care, but it totally ignored the fact that “our backs were to the wall.” Nothing had changed since we had seen it last. People were no cheerier, no duller. They had the same bored air of carrying on with what they obviously regarded as “a hell of a job.” The dug-out Colonels and Majors, who handed us our transportation, were just as fussily convinced as ever that they alone were conducting the war. On the journey up the line the only signs of menace were trench-systems hastily thrown up far back of where any had been before, a rather unusual amount of new ordnance on trucks and the greater frequence of hospital trains, hurrying towards the Channel. The idea that we were soon to be corpses began to fade; we played cards more assiduously that we might keep normal. Now and then, as we passed towns, we looked out of the window. We began to recognise the names of stations and to guess at the part of the Front to which we were going. We ceased guessing; we knew at last. “So he’s attacking the Viny Ridge,” we thought.