it may be poisoned." Of
course we had to be careful of spies, but I stuck the bottles in my
pack when the officer wasn't looking. Well, we marched to the depot
and were soon packed into the small uncomfortable coaches. We started
to kick and grumble, but Rust said: "You are lucky to have coaches at
all. Last time I went up I rode in a cattle-car," and he pointed out a
lot of cars on which was painted "Capacity, so many horses, so many
men." After that we hadn't anything more to say.
After much talking and jabbering by the French interpreters we finally
got started, and we soon left L----h far behind. I got out my poisoned
(?) wine, and not wanting to take any risks myself I politely let Baldy
have the first drink. I waited a few minutes and he still looked well,
so we finished it up. This put us in good spirits for the trip and
every one was gay; no one would ever have imagined that we were on our
way to the trenches. We were very much interested in the country we
were passing through, but what struck us most forcibly was the number
of soldiers we saw. Everywhere we looked there were crowds of them; we
thought there were a lot in Blighty, but there seemed to be nothing
else here. We passed big railway guns, and once a big Red Cross train
glided slowly by--this made us think a bit--but we tried not to look
into the future, for we realized that the horrible side of the war
would come to us soon enough. Every time the train stopped the French
kids would crowd around the coaches crying "Bully-beef, biscuits,
cigarettes for my papa, prisoner in Germany." It was all new to us,
and we gave them all we could spare. Later on we got wise to the kids,
and we found that if we were soft-hearted or soft-headed, they would
say the whole family were prisoners. One thing that surprised and
shocked us was to hear the little kids swearing; they would use the
most frightful oaths, and the funny part of it was that they gave them
the pure cockney twang; I suppose they had heard and were imitating the
Imperial troops. Well, after travelling all day we finally arrived in
C---- and we were marched off to our first billets. I belonged to "C"
Company and we were quartered in a barn connected with a farmhouse. It
was late when we arrived, and after we had supper we lay down in the
straw and soon were all asleep; but it wasn't long before we became
uneasy, and soon we were awakened by the feeling that some one or
something was
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