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 chevaux par ordinaire_."
But these are not ordinary times, so instead of eight horses they put
forty-eight of us boys in each car.
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