The morning broke fine and sunny, and we turned out along the line quite ready to march. As we were putting on the web equipment we had collected over night, the French driver of the train came along. He stopped and looked at us curiously, then asked why we were discarding our officer's belts and putting on men's equipment. We explained it was because we did not want to be picked out as officers. He said: "With our officers it is the same uniform in peace as in war." I could not think of an adequate reply to this, but the natural and irritable one would have been "more fools they," which Mulligan made without any hesitation. However, the engine driver's remark rankled, and as the R.T.O. said that most of the officers he had seen had gone up to the front in their Sam Browne belts, we decided to do the same after all and pack the web equipment in our kit. We got our orders to march at noon. Mulligan and I with our draft and the draft for another regiment were to start first; the two Sandhurst lads, who were going to another brigade, were to wait till the afternoon. We sorted out our different drafts, wished them good-bye, and set off. Part of the way from railhead to divisional headquarters lay over a ridge which overlooked the valley of the Aisne. From this ridge we saw our first shells bursting at a comfortable distance of some two mile away. One wondered as one watched the little white puffs of smoke which appeared suddenly and noiselessly, hovered for a minute a score of feet above the earth, and blew away, what damage they had caused and what it must be like for the men who formed the target beneath them. The valley of the Aisne, as we saw it, except for those white puffs of smoke and the occasional distant boom of a heavy gun, showed no signs of war. The fields were quiet and empty as on a Sunday, with crops growing tranquilly and here and there a stack of hay. At one point we passed an artillery supply park with an imperturbable-looking gunner subaltern, with an eyeglass, and a major in charge. The major had a large scale-map of the area, and showed me from it where our lines and the German's lines lay, pointing out the actual places on the horizon. He was passing the time making out possible phases of battles to come from the map. The subaltern told us that the word "Uhlan" (in the early days of the war often heard) was extinct as a form of terrorism, for, he said, they and their horses were half-starved, and turned and bolted on sight. After some five miles march we arrived at divisional headquarters, which consisted of the principal house in a tiny village. Here I found an officer in my regiment who was attached to the staff, and who asked me to come in and have tea while he found out what I was to do with the men I had brought out from England.