TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston

PART EIGHT: THE SECOND
BATTALION

I

A .THOUGH THE War has been described as the
greatest event in history, it could be tedious and
repetitional for an ordinary Infantry Officer like
myself.

From Corbie Station the War had started me on my
home journey in a Hospital Train. Rather more than
seven months later, at midnight, it again deposited
me at Corbie Station after eight hours in an unlit and
overcrowded carriage which had no glass in its win-
dows. My valise was on a truck and though I made a
scrambling attempt to get it unloaded the train
clanked away into the gloom with all my belongings
on board. We slept on the floor of the Field Am-
bulance Hut outside the station; my companions
grumbled a good deal, for several of them were out
again after being wounded last year, and one of them
claimed to have been hit in both lungs. Two cadet-
officers were going with me to the Second Battalion,
but I had little in common with them except our lost
valises, which were returned to us a week later (with
one sample of everything abstracted by someone at
the Army Service Corps Dump), Next morning, after
glumly congratulating myself that I'd packed my
safety razor in my haversack, I walked to my new
unit, which was seven miles away. I was wearing my

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