F.A., commanded down to Warwickshire
to recruit for it; and met at my lodge-gate with a telegram ordering
me off to Preston to collect a draft there and report its delivery at
Aldershot. Funny sort of home-coming for a man returning after two
years' absence! But there it was. I had just time by smart driving
to catch the next down train at our local station: so, without even a
glimpse of the ancestral roof, I put the dog-cart about and posted
back.
For the next week or so, as Jimmy put it of his own very similar
experience (he had joined up in the Special Reserve as a gunner three
years before the war), I didn't spend a night out of my train.
Then came a morning--I had rolled up with my latest draft, from
Berwick at 4.30 a.m.--when the Colonel sent for me to come to the
orderly-room some ten minutes before he opened business, and then and
there asked me if it was to my liking to come out to France with the
division then moving, on the ammunition column of his brigade.
I walked back to the R.F.A. mess, picked up a newspaper in the
ante-room, and dropped into a chair.
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