The 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles - ElectricCanadian.com

THE SOMME 29of billets inrangles and community centres so typicalthe back area. On the 10th, which was an ideal summermorning, they trekked east again across charming,untravelled roads, past green woods and fenceless fieldsof stubble and tall lucerne still damp with dew. Theywere bound for Vert-Galand Farm on the Doullens-Amiens road. Half-way there they received orders tobillet at Montrelet. The men found themselves in thenext village to Candas and wondered if they had beenlost and travelling in circles. They did not realize,perhaps, that they were only one of hundreds of battalionswhich were kept moving all through this area on theway to the Somme. On the morning of the llth motorbuses lined the village road and conveyed the Battalionthirty miles to Albert. The dusty convoy rolled overthe flint and chalk roads, through little villages withtheir steepled churches, public ponds and humble schoolhouses, past farms and hutments crowded with troopsand out again along the high road with its rows of tall,trimmed poplars. By noon they were entering Albertthrough the congested hive behind the battle fields. TheBattalion de-bused outside Albert and moved by platoonsto the brick-fields at the north of the town.Coming from the Salient, where nothing moved on thesurface, to this comparatively open warfare was at firstincomprehensible to the men. They never dreamed ofsuch a contrast. All had tried to visualize this greatbattle-ground to which they knew it would probably betheir fate to go. It was what they felt, rather thanwhat they saw that impressed them most; the freedom,the unguarded movements, the disregard for protection.They were stunned by the vastness of the operations;tracks led everywhere across the country, processions ofendless traffic moved in all directions, horse-lines coveredevery flat piece of land, canvas troughs watered thousandsof animals, hosts of tents were pitched on the open hillsides. Guns were everywhere, some crudely camouflaged,others without any cover; large naval guns mounted onrailway trucks fired regularly from the valleys rockingthe whole country-side. Ammunition dumps which