g softly from a cot in Ward VIII.

A month later the Principal Chaplain asked me to go to a battalion.
Chaplains who had been through the previous winter with battalions were
not anxious for another winter of it, if fresh men could be found. I was
thankful to go, in spite of all the kindness there had been on every
hand and the friendships made. The devilish ingenuity of wounds was
getting the better of me.

My charge was a brigade, containing a battalion of the Gordon
Highlanders, with which I was directed to mess. But the day I joined,
this battalion was taken out of the brigade, and as soon as the
rearrangement was completed I was transferred to one of the battalions
of The Royal Scots. While I was with this unit both its commanding
officer and its adjutant were changed. In both cases the cause was the
promotion of the officer in question.

DUMBARTON'S DRUMS

_The Regimental Ribbon of The Royal Scots is shown on the wrapper of
this book_

CHAPTER V

DUMBARTON'S DRUMS

I

_Back Again!_

The landing of the British Expeditionary Force in the far-away days of
August 1914 was one of the great moments of history. And Scotland has a
special share in the pride and sorrow that surround that great day, for
in her premier regiment centred memories of warfare and endurance, of
ancient alliances and ancient enmities, without a parallel in the story
of any other regular regiment. The oldest regiment in Europe was on the
battlefield once again. The First, or Royal Regiment of Foot, now known
as The Royal Scots, when it climbed the steep streets of Boulogne,
marched on a soil sacred to it by the memories of heroic campaigns.
Names that were as yet unfamiliar to the world at large were dear to it
as the last resting-places of its comrades of long ago--names such as
Dunkirk and Dixmude, Furnes and Ypres, Saberne and Bar-le-Duc. Hepburn's
Regiment had fought over every foot of the ground on which it was now to
share the waging of the greatest of all campaigns. Dumbarton's Drums
were once more beating their way through Europe to the making of
history. The trust of Gustavus Adolphus and Turenne, of Marlborough and
Wellington, marched with them as the promise of victory; and from the
old Royals, dustily climbing the cobbled street, spoke all the glamour
of 'age-kept victories.'

France was a smiling land in those days, for the sun shone in the hearts
of Frenchwomen as the rumour of war rose from the anxiously e