We did not stay very long in our new camping ground. For a few days the men seemed quite content. Everything was new to them; but soon they began to wonder how long it would be before we would leave. The nights often were very cold in the tents, for it was now late in October. We began to feel sure that orders for departing must come soon as no preparations were being made for going into winter quarters. On Sunday I had announced confessions for the following Wednesday. On the day set, four priests came to help me, but just as the men were being formed up to go to the church, word came that we were to leave that evening for overseas. The men were dismissed and soon there was a scene of general disorder; but on all sides were happy faces. All seemed glad to go. They had been looking forward to it for so long a time.
I was obliged to tell the priests who had come so far that there would be no confessions. I kept the hosts that the Sisters in a nearby town had made for me, as I hoped to hear the men’s confessions on the boat on the way across the ocean.
All night long we stood around, waiting for the train to come to take us, but there had been some delay, and so it was not till early in the morning that we left. Our journey was not a very long one, but we were obliged to wait at many different stations till trains passed us. As the movement order had called for a night trip, no dining-car or buffet had been attached. The men went hungry all day. The last trip had been one of over-indulgence. This was one of abstinence.
We had no breakfast and no dinner, yet the men seemed quite content, and joked pleasantly over the fact that they were hungry. At one country station where we were side-tracked the bugler jumped out on the platform and blew the call: “Come to the cook-house door, boys!” But as there was no cook-house door to go to, and no “Mulligan battery”—the name given to the field-kitchen, with its steaming odors of Irish stew—they greeted the call of the smiling bugler with derisive laughter.
At four o’clock we were all aboard the S. S. Corsican, and at five we pulled out from the dock, the band on the upper deck playing “Auld Lang Syne.” Many relatives of the lads, who had arrived in the little seaport town, waved their good-byes from the dock as the boat swung clear from its moorings and steamed slowly down the bay. The boys swarmed up the rope ladders and cheered; many little tugs far down on the water darted about, shrieking shrilly their farewells. We were off to the war!