ad and dozens along the sides, fitted with reflectors to throw
the light down so as to show the broad green stripe which is
prescribed by the Geneva Convention. Then we both laughed. Little did
we think then that we would both be coming back to "Blighty" on just
such a ship; Sandy within a few weeks and I more than a year later.

Before daylight we picked up a string of beacons, red and white, and
dropped anchor. As soon as it was light we could see the harbor of Le
Havre. I had been there before and recognized it quickly enough. Then
we knew that France was our destination.

After waiting for the proper stage of the tide, the anchor was
weighed, and with a lot of fussy little tugs buzzing about, now
pushing at one end and then scurrying around to give a pull at the
other, we finally tied up to the dock at our appointed place and
prepared to disembark. The docks were thronged with men, mostly in
some sort of uniform and all busy. Many of the French soldiers were
wearing the old uniforms of blue and red, while others were clothed in
corduroy. The new "horizon blue" had not yet been adopted. There were
many English soldiers, mostly elderly men of the so-called "Navvie's
Battalions," but among all the others, was quite a number whose
uniform was the subject for much speculation until some one happened
to notice that they were always working in groups and were,
invariably, accompanied by a _poilu_ carrying a rifle with bayonet
fixed. It was our first sight of German prisoners and it gave us a
genuine thrill. The war was coming closer to us every minute.

Disembarking was nothing more than common, every-day, hard labor,
relieved, occasionally, by the antics of some of the horses that did
not want to go down the steep narrow gangway. It was the devil's own
job to get them aboard in the first place and equally difficult to
persuade them to go ashore. Such perversity, I have noticed, is not
confined to horses: the average soldier can give exhibitions of it
that would shame the wildest mustang.

We had been living, since leaving Sandling, on "bully beef" and
biscuits, but here on the dock we found one of those wonderful little
coffee canteens, maintained and operated by one of the many thousands
of noble English women who, from the beginning of the war, have
managed, God knows how, always to be at the right place at the right
time, to cheer the soldier on his way; working, apparently, night and
day, to hand out a cup of hot