He heard the first sounds of movement inside the tents, the muffled voices; the first dishevelled men appeared, stumbling across to the ablution benches. As the white light crept across the sky the camp came to life with noise and movement. The Fifth Battalion was awake.

At eight o’clock in the morning, while the holiday-makers in the town below were crawling from their beds and looking gratefully out of their windows at the radiant sunshine and blue sky of a perfect summer’s day, the men of the Fifth Battalion marched quietly down to the sea and went aboard ship.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Between the shores

FOR THREE DAYS the ships lay at anchor in the Solent while the men of the Fifth Battalion, who by now had left excitement far behind them, settled down to make themselves comfortable in yet another home.

They lounged at the rails and sprawled in groups on the decks, sleeping, eating, playing cards and talking. They slept soundly and ate heartily, as if eating were a pastime in itself. Men were haunting the ship’s galley all day long, cadging extras, and sneaking back into the meal queues for second helpings. The talk was of everything but the war – much of it, indeed, consisted of grumbling at the food – except when, two or three times a day, a rumour would sweep through the troop decks that the time had come to up anchor. The card players took up most of the deck space. They squatted in little groups, their upturned berets lying on the deck between their knees to hold their money; for once neither n.c.o.s nor officers interfered with their gambling. For the most part, they played the soldiers’ games, Brag and Nap. Here and there was a little party of men playing Blind Brag; Brag is a game of bluff, Blind Brag a game of reckless chance, and these men were playing it recklessly, grinning as they heaped all the money they possessed on their cards. The Doggy Boys, who had monopolised a snug corner protected from the Channel breezes, played solo for hours on end, as absorbed over their cards as at this moment the generals were – somewhere back on the mainland – over their maps.

There was no sentimental talk, no soft singing or playing of harmonicas, no writing of farewell letters, no men sadly gazing at the distant shore. Three days with nothing to do but eat, sleep and gamble was an event in the lives of the men of the Fifth Battalion. They made the most of it, and thought of nothing else.