nger but that did not tell us
anything. The native Britishers we had in our crowd were mostly from
"north of the Tweed" so what could they be expected to know about
Kent. For Kent it was, sure enough, and after a march of some two or
three miles we found ourselves "at home" in West Sandling Camp. And
how proudly we marched up the long hill and past the Brigade
Headquarters, our pipers skirling their heartiest and the drummers
beating as never before. For we were on exhibition and we knew it. The
roads were lined with soldiers and they cheered and cheered as we came
marching in. We were tired, our loads were heavy and the mud was
deep, but never a man in that column would have traded his place for
the most luxurious comforts at home.

There came a time when we hated that hill and that camp as the devil
hates holy water, but that Sunday morning, marching into a British
camp, with British soldiers, eager to keep right on across the channel
and clean up Kaiser Bill and feeling as though we were able to do it,
single-handed--why, the meanest private in the Twenty-first Canadians
considered himself just a little bit better than any one else on
earth.

Thus we came to our home in England, where we worked and sweated and
swore for four solid months before we were considered fit to take our
place in the firing-line. All that time, from the top of Tolsford
Hill, just at the edge of our camp, we could see France, "the promised
land"; we could hear the big guns nearly every night, and we, in our
ignorance, could not understand why we were not allowed to go over and
settle the whole business. We marched all over Southern England. I
_know_ I have slept under every hedge-row in Kent. We dug trenches one
day and filled them up the next. We made bombs and learned to throw
them. We mastered every kind of signaling from semaphore to wireless,
and we nearly wore out the old Roman stone roads hiking all the way
from Hythe to Canterbury. We carried those old Colt guns and heavy
tripods far enough to have taken us to Bagdad and back.

But, oh, man! what a tough lot of soldiers it made of us. Without just
that seasoning we would never have been able to make even the first
two days' marches when we finally did go across. The weaklings fell by
the wayside and were replaced until, when the "great day" came and we
embarked for France, I verily believe that that battalion, and
especially the "Emma Gees," was about the toughest lot of soldiers wh