Private Peat | Page 9

in France before midnight. The trip across the
Channel in ordinary times is not often more than two and a half hours.
We had no bunks allotted to us, and didn't think that any would be
needed. We all lay around in any old place, and in any old attitude. I,
for one, devoted most of the time during that evening to learning the art

of putting my equipment together. The majority of the boys were at the
old familiar game, poker.
We had not been on this transport very long when we had our first
introduction to bully beef and biscuits. Bully beef is known to civilians
the world over as corned beef, and to the new Sammy as "red horse."
But even bully beef and biscuits aren't so bad, and our thoughts were
not so much on what we were getting to eat as on when we were getting
to France.
As the hours went by we more and more eagerly craned our necks over
the deck rails, trying to pierce the darkness of the deep for one flash of
light that might mean France hard ahead. But nothing happened, and
one after another the watchers dropped off to sleep.
When dawn broke we woke and rubbed our eyes. We were mystified
and not a little mortified. Where was France? There was nothing but
water, blue as heaven itself, around us. We were still at sea, and still
going strong.
The hours of that day dragged out to an interminable length. No one
spoke of the matter--the question of land in sight was not discussed.
Some of the boys went back to poker. Others decided to be seasick, and
subsequently wished for a storm and the consequent wrecking of the
ship, with a watery death as relief.
Bully beef and biscuits at noon; bully beef and biscuits at our evening
meal, and no sight of land. Night came. The more hopeful of us did the
craning business over the deck rails for a few more hours. The
pessimistic, deciding France had ceased to be, returned to poker. We
slept. We woke. We watched the sun rise--over the sea!
About noon that day after the ration of bully beef had gone its round
and we, in consequence, were feeling pretty blue, there was a group of
us standing around doing nothing. Suddenly Tom King came rushing
up in great excitement. He had had an idea.
"Say, you fellows, I don't care a darn what any of you may say, I

believe these blinkin' English are sick of us and are sending us back to
Canada!"
No such luck. Before sundown that evening we sighted land. We
steamed slowly into the port of St. ----. This is a large seaport town
near the Bay of Biscay, on the southwest coast of France. Why in the
world they wanted to take us all the way round there, I don't know. I
was told that we were among the first British troops to be landed at this
port.
As soon as we disembarked from the boats that evening, before we left
the docks, we were issued goat-skin coats. The odor which issued from
them made us believe that they, at least in some former incarnation, had
belonged to another little animal family known as the skunk. Ugh! The
novelty of these coats occupied us for a while, and if a sergeant or a
comrade addressed us we answered in "goat talk": "Ba-a-a, ba-a-a-a...."
It was apparent that the secrecy of troop transportation which held in
England held also in France. The populace could not have known of
our coming, for there was no scene, nor was there a reception. We were
to meet with that later on.
Here, however, we did meet the French "fag." When Tommy gets one
puff of this article of combustion he never wants another. It is one puff
too many. Of course our first race was to buy cigarettes--but, napoo!
Before entraining we were all shocked by the dreadful tidings that the
transport carrying the Forty-Eighth Highlanders had been sunk. This
news was soon discredited and the truth was established when the
Forty-Eighth came up the line in a few days and reported that they had
heard we, the Third, had been sunk and all drowned. Apparently it was
a part of certain propaganda to publish that all transports of British
soldiers were destroyed. So far none had even been attacked.
The evening of our arrival we boarded the little trains. To our surprise
and to our intense disgust, we had not even the passenger coaches
provided in England and Canada. I say little trains, because they were
little, and in addition the coaches were not coaches, but box cars.

Painted on the side of the "wheeled box" was "Huit