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By Root 2005 0

could not be done in a day. The most welcome event was the issue of warm clothing, mufflers, cardigans, caps with ear-flaps to let down against the cold, serge uniforms to replace thin khaki drill and, best of all, warm overcoats. Packs were issued to replace the peacetime kit-bags which were packed with superfluous kit and sent home. The officers’ tin trunks went too, and with them the blue patrol dress worn as mess-kit in the palmy days in Malta, the Sam Browne belts of shining leather, and the swords which were now deemed by the Army to be surplus to the requirements of trench warfare. The officers were issued with revolvers instead (they had to pay for them) and from now on were to carry haversacks and wear practical webbing straps and equipment like the men. Personal kits were issued in dribs and drabs – but the battalion equipment was another matter. Day after day they waited for the transport – the general service wagons to carry rations and forage, the water-carts, the cooks’ wagons, the tool-carts, the carts for small-arms ammunition, and the horses that would pull them all.

Without its wheels the Battalion was useless. Without weapons it could do nothing at all, and the few rifles that had been required for garrison duties had been left behind in Malta. It was all very well for the Colonel to receive instructions that ‘training will continue’ but lacking weapons, in the absence of a parade ground or even of fields that were firm underfoot, with no dry huts or marquees where the men could be assembled, and since it only stopped raining in order to snow, it was difficult to keep the men occupied let alone train them. There was nothing for it but to route-march them round the country roads hour after dreary hour, to go through the motions of practising ‘company attacks’ with sticks to represent rifles, flags to represent the enemy, and string to represent the trenches which, for lack of spades and shovels, they were unable to practise digging in the sodden ground. As often as possible, as a welcome diversion, the men were marched to Etaples in mud-spattered batches to wash in hot water at the fishmarket or at the gasworks. Every day brought fresh rumours and expectations but it was more than two weeks before the tools and the transport finally arrived. Last of all came the rifles.

The machine-guns arrived too, to the profound relief of Arthur Agius who had been endeavouring to train a machine-gun section without the benefit of guns to train them on. He had managed to commandeer a freezing leaky shed where he expounded as much of the theory as was possible with the aid of diagrams, but when they had gone over it a hundred times in wearisome detail and inspiration had long run out, he was reduced to sending the men off to ‘practise reconnoitring’. By the alacrity with which they set off Agius had a shrewd suspicion that their intention was to reconnoitre some warm farmhouse kitchen where eggs and hot coffee could be obtained, and judiciously refrained from questioning them too closely on their return.

But now that the weapons had arrived there was plenty to do and his command was a machine-gun section in more than name. They had 4 guns, 4 wagons, 12 horses and 36 men. At last, the Battalion was ready and on 25 January they received orders to move the following day.

Capt. A. J. Agius.

We got up at 3.30. It was a beautiful night and just on freezing point. I struggled with a cold-water shave of which I felt rather proud considering the hour and the dark and the temperature. We finally paraded at 6.30 – there had been a lot to do in the meantime and it was not very easy to get it all done in the dark.

We got clear after having had quite a decent meal of bread and butter, cold bacon and tea. We reached the station about 7. The train was due to start at 8.25, though by the time we had packed in all our transport (some thirteen wagons and fifty-eight horses) it was about 8.50 before we got off. We officers were eight in a compartment and we entrained just in time, for we had only been in the train a few minutes when