That journey up to the Front was for me a never-to-be-forgotten experience. It lasted for three days, the train creeping along at ten miles an hour. As on the boat, we were a mixed party, comprising drafts for some eight regiments, and totalling about 1500 men. The train was of immense length. The senior officer was an elderly ex-Militia subaltern, completely incompetent. He made no regulations, posted no guards at stations, gave none of the draft officers orders, and by the end of the third day was firing his revolver wildly out of the window. For this I do not blame him much, for the situation had by this time reached a climax. The different drafts remained fairly quiet in their carriages for the first night, but when the next morning broke fine and sunny and we stopped at a station in the middle of a French town, first one man and then another climbed down from the stuffy, crowded carriages on to the platform. From the platform it was only a step into the main street of the town, and this step was quickly taken. When the train wanted to move on there were no drafts. The drafts were all in cafés, cottages, and pie shops, receiving a hearty welcome from the inhabitants. The elderly ex-Militia subaltern said they must be collected and put back in the train, and set off with different draft officers to do this, but as fast as the men were turned out of one shop they went into another lower down the street. Eventually Mulligan organized a drive from the lower end of the town up to the station, the men were collected, and off we started again. Warned by this experience, the ex-Militia subaltern ordered the driver of the train on no account again to stop near a town. Our next halt was, therefore, well in the middle of open country. Beside the line there ran a peaceful stream. The noonday heat was by now at its height, and after a glance out of the carriage windows we settled to sleep, secure in our remoteness from trouble. Suddenly the ex-Militiaman, putting his head out of the window, exclaimed: "My God! Look at the ----s." We looked, and saw several of the draft divesting themselves of their clothes preparing to bathe. We jumped out to order them into the train again, but while we were doing this every carriage was opened and the different drafts, perhaps thinking a bathing parade had been ordered and the officers were going down to superintend, all jumped out and made for the river. "I should start the train again," said Mulligan, looking coldly on the scene of confusion. "They'll come back quick enough if they think they are going to be left behind."