CHAPTER XXII
ORDERS FOR FRANCE
Not a week had passed after my retreat, when one morning a runner from divisional headquarters came into my hut, saluted and passed me a paper. I was ordered to France. This was good news, for I had now been in the Army over a year. The battalion had been recruited to full strength early in 1916, and I had hoped to be in France before the end of that year. It was now June, 1917.
The following morning I left Witley Camp for London, where I was to receive further orders and equip myself with bed-roll, trench boots, etc. At headquarters, in London, I learned that I was to go to No. 2 Canadian Infantry Base Depot, at Etaples. From there, after a while, I would be sent to the trenches.
Etaples is a quaint little fishing village on the Canche River, about two miles from its mouth. Before the war it had been a famous resort for artists; quite a colony had lived in the little town. Apart from its quaintness and the picturesque costumes of the townsfolk, its chief interest for artists lay in its beautiful sunsets. It was a glorious sight to look down the Canche, widening between the jack-pine-crested sand dunes, as it flowed nearer the sea, to the great golden sun sliding down towards the merry dancing blue waves of the Straits of Dover, slowly turning red and redder as it sank among the long pencils or banks of reddening clouds fringed with gold. When the sun would sink into the waves the water would be crimsoned for miles, and for a long time after the great red disc had disappeared the distant sails of the fishing boats made a very pretty picture as they moved silently over the waves.
Etaples, besides being quaint, was a very dirty little town. At any hour of the day one might see a good housewife come to the door and empty a tub of soapy water that had served its use into the cobbled-street, where it was mingled with other soapy waters that ran continuously along the gutters. Every morning piles of garbage appeared in the streets before the houses.
During the war almost every house bore a sign nailed to the door upon which was written or printed the word “Estaminet,” which signified that within one might purchase wine, beer, coffee and other refreshments. Sometimes accompanying the sign was a smaller one, bearing the English words, “Eggs and chips.”
All the narrow cobble-stoned streets that ran from every direction into the village stopped at the large market square. Market days were twice a week, and then it was difficult to find one’s way through the crowds who came to buy from the black- or white-hooded country women, whose market wagons, mostly drawn by donkeys, were laden with everything imaginable from farm, house, and field. It was a striking scene there in the old market square before the town hall. Soldiers from almost all the Allied armies could be seen there, while nurses from the great military hospitals, about one-half mile from the town along the road that followed the Canche towards Camiers and the sea, moved quickly, nearly always two by two, carrying small market-baskets.