which we lived for months with the velvety swards
that first greeted our eyes.

We had detrained at Amesbury, bleary eyed and sleepless after a tedious
night trip from Plymouth. This had followed a seemingly interminable
march through Plymouth, during which our progress had been seriously
delayed by women who broke into the ranks and kissed and wept over our
dear boys. Officers escaped with mere handshakes, but still found the
ordeal rather trying.

[Illustration: EASTERN ONTARIO REGIMENT, NEAR STONEHENGE.]

However, a few minutes of standing around the platform munching
sandwiches while the necessary mistakes were made and corrected wakened
us thoroughly, and then to the crunch of our own footsteps we swung
smartly down the village street.

Here we found we were in a new world, a world we had read of in books.
The thatched cottages, the neatly-clipped hedges, the churchyard with
its headstones and tumbling wall, all seemed to fit in with what we
expected. When we passed a public-house with its wooden sign emblazoned
with "The Three Feathers," or some such emblem, the picture was
complete--it was the England of Jeffery Farnol!

Later we swung across the ample Downs, passing on our way Stonehenge.
After having said "I don't know" to a few hundred questions from the men
nearest you, it was a relief to be able to answer a few for a change.
What memory failed to supply imagination furnished; but this is every
guide's privilege. A momentary halt here--to give the men a
rest--afforded a chance for cameras to click, and then we left the road
and marched across the grassy Downs to the Bustard Inn. Here the rows of
tents that were to be our homes for the next few months had already
been pitched.

Other brigades went to Lark Hill, to Pond Farm, to Sling Plantation, and
to West Down, North and West Down, South ... one could lose a whole army
in this vast training ground.

Gone was the long main street of Val Cartier camp with its cinema shows
and booths of tempting merchandise. Gone, too, was the little river with
its gravelly shores for bathing.

But we were one step nearer our goal, and that was the one thought that
consoled us during those trying winter months that followed.

From then on we saw little but our own brigade--the 1st Brigade--and the
Princess Patricia's Light Infantry--who were also at Bustard Camp.

The latter held themselves rather aloof from the Canadian Division,
counting themselves as superior tro