oked in the bell-tent, the night before sea-sick, and
now wakened up for rum and cawfee. Blast it, I say!"

We lined up two deep on the six-foot way, shivering in the bitter
cold, our mess-tins in our hands. The fires by the railway threw a dim
light on the scene, officers paraded up and down issuing orders,
everybody seemed very excited, and nearly all were grumbling at being
awakened from their beds in the horse-trucks. Many of our mates were
now coming back with mess-tins steaming hot, and some would come to a
halt for a moment and sip from their rum and coffee. Chilled to the
bone we drew nearer to the coffee dixies. What a warm drink it would
be! I counted the men in front--there were no more than twelve or
thirteen before me. Ah! how cold! and hot coffee--suddenly a whistle
was blown, then another.

"Back to your places!" the order came, and never did a more unwilling
party go back to bed. We did not learn the reason for the order; (p. 029)
in the army few explanations are made. We shivered and slumbered till
dawn, and rose to greet a cheerless day that offered us biscuits and
bully-beef for breakfast and bully-beef and biscuits for dinner. At
half-past four in the afternoon we came to a village and formed into
column of route outside the railway station. Two hours march lay
before us we learned, but we did not know where we were bound. As we
waited ready to move off a sound, ominous and threatening, rumbled in
from the distance and quivered by our ears. We were hearing the sound
of guns!

CHAPTER III (p. 030)

OUR FRENCH BILLETS

The fog is white on Glenties moors,
The road is grey from Glenties town,
Oh! lone grey road and ghost-white fog,
And ah! the homely moors of brown.

The farmhouse where we were billeted reminded me strongly of my home
in Donegal with its fields and dusky evenings and its spirit of
brooding quiet. Nothing will persuade me, except perhaps the Censor,
that it is not the home of Marie Claire, it so fits in with the
description in her book.

The farmhouse stands about a hundred yards away from the main road, with
a cart track, slushy and muddy running across the fields to the very
door. The whole aspect of the place is forbidding, it looks squalid and
dilapidated, and smells of decaying vegetable matter, of manure and every
other filth that can find a resting place in the vicinity of an unclean
dwelling-place.