Monday September 4, 1916

Today we had the usual route march and work-out at the drill ground doing extended order work.

At 10:30 p.m. we moved out with full pack on, by an 11th hour order and marched through St Omar, through two more big towns all in darkness. At 3:30 a.m. we came out to where a railroad touched a large place called Ark (not sure of the spelling). We slept on the side-walk till 5 a.m. Then we boarded the train, and came through many large towns including the war-famed harbour of Calais, finally stopping at Abbeville, a very large important railway junction. We had route marched 12 miles or more by night, rode half a day on trains through a good bit of France till 3 p.m.

Then we marched five miles out to our billets, the usual barn floor littered well over with straw. The boys ran short of bread on the train, in fact short of everything to eat. Having a little money, I bought what I could, not much but it helped a little in out crowd.

We were told that at the billets where we stopped that we would only get tea for supper. Everybody was absolutely starving, so those of us who had money bought up bread from the peasant farmers besides that we got a few boiled eggs. The cooks got us some bacon after all so we didn't do bad.