This kind of thing went on during the whole trip, which was full of interest to us as the green fields and friendliness we met on every hand appealed to most of us after the sojourn in dry-as-dust Egypt, until finally, after passing through Orleans, Lyons and Abbeville, we at last arrived at a place on the coast a few miles south of Boulogne called Etaples.

We were glad, even though we had just experienced a rather interesting and enjoyable trip across France, when after half an hours wait, our officers came along and ordered us out of the train with all gear and fell us in in readiness to march to the camp, which we knew was not far off since we had all caught occasional glimpses of it as we neared Etaples. Presently it began to drizzle with rain and as it was nearly dark, we were given the order to march and were led by our guides into our portion of the huge encampment which soon opened out to our astonished gaze. Etaples was what is knows as a base depot and contained something like 200,000 troops and was composed of thousands and thousands of white bell tents and long low huts used for various purposes and in extent it must have covered approximately ten square miles. The enormity of the whole place almost astounded me, as the scene resembled an huge ant’s nest just disturbed, as the thousands upon thousands of men could be seen between the lanes of tents, all hurrying hither and thither on their respective business. Bugles were blowing in an hundred places for various reasons, motor lorries and G.S. waggons were rattling along the hard metalled roads, laden with rations, clothing, refuse, etc. whilst the troops were singing in groups in their tents or playing mouth organs, pipes and concertinas. Here and there, as we marched to our part of the camp, we passed the canteens, Y.M.C.A. huts, cinema huts, Q.M. stores, guard rooms with guards mounted, until at last, after about twenty minutes of bewilderment, we arrived at the part of the Australian camp which we were to occupy during the next couple of months until our training was completed.

Here we marched on to the parade ground and dumped our gear and were then given some hot tea, after which (it now being about 8.30 p.m. and quite dark) we were divided up into lots of 200 and allotted to some mess huts for the night. Since we were just about tired out with our long journey in the train, we nearly all took the opportunity of going to sleep and were soon lost in slumber, glad of the privilege of resting our weary backs, after having to sit bolt upright for the best part of 54 hours on the train. Next day, we were formed up again and drafted off to our respective units. We being for the 20th battalion, together with about 200 others, were marched off to the lines of No. 4 company of the 5th Training Battalion, situated in the north east corner of the Etaples depot.

After having been allotted to our respective tents, we were again fallen in and marched across the camp to the ordnance stores, where we were issued with rifles and bayonets and then returned and placed in our tents. We were then fallen in again in loose order with towels, this time to proceed to the bath house in order to get a much needed bath, a luxury which we had not experienced for over a month.

The kind of army bath we were able to get at Etaples from time to time is well worth description. The bath house itself was a long low corrugated iron building with a dressing room at one end and the bath itself on the other. Marching through the door, we entered the dressing room until it was full and there undressed. Our soiled clothes we took to the cubicle, where we were given clean shirts, singlets, sox, towels and underpants in exchange by the man in charge, our dirty clothes being rewashed and issued later on to other men using the baths. Having been issued with clean clothes, we next went into the steam room, the door being closed when a sufficient number had entered. The steam was then turned on and slowly increased in pressure until a temperature of about 103º was reached, when the perspiration would literally pour out of our naked bodies. After a few minutes of this stifling stewy heat, the temperature was gradually eased off until presently we went under a hot shower, and finished up with a thorough cleansing. We then dried ourselves and dressed in our clean clothes and fell in outside the bath house again, feeling beautifully fresh and clean and free once more from the ever present curse in the form of lice. Such baths were frequent during our training days at Etaples as there were a good number of these Turkish baths in use, so that our turn to use them would come round sometimes twice a week.

Of course, we also had our regular wash houses, fitted with small tubs and troughs with water laid on where we could if we felt inclined and were not afraid of cold water, get a wash down. Here also we used to perform our daily ablutions, wash our clothes and shave, etc. Etaples was an army base depot. By this I mean it was a depot for all troops of a certain army on the Western Front, who came to France from England or Egypt and who were either waiting to rejoin their units at the front, or were undergoing further training prior to joining the Line battalions, or for any other reason had to make the depot a sort of half way house. The depot hardly ever contained less than 200,000 men, composed of the most wonderful collection of humanity it would be possible to concentrate under any circumstances. There were English, Scots, Irish and Welsh troops of every conceivable regiment, all wearing their own peculiar uniforms and their various distinctive badges and head dress. There were Colonials represented by Australians, New Zealanders, New Foundlanders, Canadians, Maoris, South Africans and black West Indians, all of whom occupied their own portion of the camp and had their own arrangements for feeding and training, etc. Expeditionary Force Canteens, Church Army Huts, Y.M.C.A. Huts, Cinemas and Salvation Army Huts were dotted at intervals all over the huge area of the camp and between the lot of them, troops as a whole were well supplied with groceries, writing and reading material and beer and so on. As the recreation huts were run by religious organisations for the purpose of amusing the troops after parade hours there was therefore any amount of amusements in the way of concerts lectures, picture shows and music where the men could pass the time away agreeably. A more busy area it would be hardly possible to conceive. Just imagine, nearly a quarter of a million assorted specimens of humanity from all parts of the British Empire concentrated in a relatively small area of a few square miles, all moving about their own individual business, some marching, some doing camp duties, some resting, or laughing and talking, some doing this, that or the other thing, while the combined murmur of their thousands of voices was sufficient to cause a continuous buzzing-rumbling noise like the hum of millions of mosquitos.

At night time, the scene, as one looked down on the camp from on high, was rather novel and pretty. There were thousands of tents all sheltering their handful of men and in each tent a candle burned from sundown until “lights out” which was blown at 10 p.m. so that what with the thousands of pin points of light as emitted from each tent and the stars above and the electric arc lights from the railway nearby, the scene was indeed a pretty one. Along the Eastern and Southern edges of the camp ran the main railway line and the traffic which used the line was enormous as a huge proportion of the troop trains and supply trains plying between the coast and the front had to pass through Etaples. The noise of the trains puffing and pumping and whistling and the shunters blowing their little squeaking horns, intermingled with the noise of the camp bugles and bands and other sounds of the camp, literally made night hideous, and it was some little time before the new arrivals in the Etaples depot were able to become used to it and obtain their proper rest at night. On the South Western outskirts of the camp were situated the base hospital encampments, composed of marquees and long low wooden huts used as wards, surgerys and dispensaries etc. Some of the huts were used as nurses quarters and stores for hospital supplies. At the headquarters of the various hospitals, the Union Jack and the Red Cross flag were flown from a tall flag staff while most of the larger buildings had a huge red cross painted on the roof. The forefront of the hospital areas were generally well laid out with gardens and lawns with whitewashed border fences and gravelled paths, all the work being performed by the convalescent soldiers in their spare time, the object being to create a pleasant atmosphere which is said to have materially helped to hasten the patient’s recovery.

Further on to the South West of the Etaples depot, at a distance of about three miles and after having passed the base hospitals of St, John’s and St. George and the Canadian General, were situated what we privates used to call the “Bull Rings” or training grounds. The training area was called the “Bull Ring” by the troops because it was to there that they had to march every day, to go through about five successive weary hours of being driven about, harangued and otherwise tortured, they being the “bulls” and the officers and sergeants being the “bull baiters”. It was to this place also that we reinforcements were required to march in full marching order, after being fallen in at 6 a.m. to go through our share of the hard training under British officers and old regular army N.C.O.s. We used to arrive on the ground about 7.30 a.m. and with only one break we trained solidly until about 12.30 p.m. doing extended order drill, bayonet fighting, platoon drill, rapid loading, theory of musketry, listening to lectures on care of arms, sanitation, fire direction and fire control and so on until it was time to fall in and drag our weary bones back to our midday meal of bully beef or stew.

The main idea seems to have been to subject us to a few weeks’ solid hard training to harden us up for what we were soon to undergo in the trenches and candidly speaking, those Tommy N.C.O.s and officers knew their jobs, and soon had us all as hard as nails, although we found the work terribly hard at first. Most of our instructors were men who composed the remnants of the “Old Contemptibles” and who, being possessed of the necessary knowledge were used as N.C.O. instructors to the newer men as they went through the base camps.

We did a great deal of bayonet fighting practice. A Sergeant would line us up with fixed bayonets in rows of ten, one behind the other and after working us up with blood curdling stories of soldiers (mostly “giant Scotsmen” or wild Irishmen who had spiked Germans on the end of their bayonets and hurled them over their shoulders, etc.) we were given a demonstration accompanied with many grunts and “huks” and teeth grinding and staring eyeballs, by the sergeant. After the demonstration we were put over the courses and had to jump into and out of trenches, stabbing bags and grunting the while until we came to a gallows on which hung a bag per man and on which was painted the distorted face of a grinning Hun, below which were five white spots. The idea was to yell like fury and charge with as much fury as possible, calling all our imagination and hatred into play, until we came to the bags, when we drove our bayonets right through where the imaginary Huns “tummy” should have been. If we did not satisfy the sergeant that we were in earnest, we more than likely had to perform the gory deed again. I used to find that it took a good deal of effort to work up anything like the required “fury” after only having breakfasted off a pot of tea and a small piece of “lance corporal” bacon with a piece of bread, followed by a three mile route march, carrying a full pack and rifle.

The part of the training that I liked best was the hour we spent each day in lectures on military subjects. I used to find the most secluded corner as far off as possible from the instructor, and there doze peacefully until the hour was spent and we were fallen in for more galloping about in the loose sand, stalking imaginary Huns and stemming imaginary charges with 5 rounds rapid fire, etc. When it was time to proceed “home” to camp, the troops fell in and marched home in column of route, those troops who were on the ground first leaving first. The head of the column was generally back in Etaples 3 miles off and dismissed before the last lot of men had left the training ground, there being a continuous column of men from the camp to training ground.

Every week end we were granted leave into the village of Etaples from which the camp depot derived its name. Harold Mitchell, Bert Allen and I went on several occasions and discovered the usual place where we could obtain a meal of steak and chips and sampled some of the famous “Oporto” Port wine, finding it very good. The village itself was not much to look at, it being a fishing village and very old and dirty with only a few shops where post cards, fruit and other oddments could be procured. It however, possesses a very old church dating back to the year 1,100 A.D. which is very dilapidated and out of repair, but which did not interest the troops much. I had not been long in Etaples before I got into touch with my relatives in England and from thence onward, I received a constant stream of letters and parcels which went a long way towards making life a little more cheerful.

We were paid regularly every fortnight, also, so that we always had our 40 francs to enable us to purchase the little things we required from the stalls of the French girls and the canteens, with the result that we were always able to get enough to eat and beer to drink. The North side of the camp was bounded by open fields under crops of wheat, clover, turnips, etc. and beautiful undulating country stretching to the northward and on this side of the Depot area, we were allowed to wander at will and could go for walks as far as we chose, so long as we were back in time for Roll call at night. We frequently took advantage of this concession in order to get away into the open green fields away from the congested camp and dust and noise, etc and often would lie for hours in the cool clover, listening to the stories of the men who were just back from the firing line.

Every Sunday, it was the custom to air our tents by letting them down, thus enabling the sun to shine on the area we slept on. After this, we received our issue of tobacco, cigarettes and matches and would then be fallen in for Church parade in one of the Y.M.C.A. huts, which lasted until dinner time, if we were unable to evade the ordeal.

Things went on from day to day until we had been about seven or eight weeks in camp, during which time we underwent the training required of us, until we were efficient in most of the duties and acquirements which a soldier should know. We knew all about bombing trenches, consolidation of trenches, bayonet fighting and musketry and were physically as fit as fiddles, and knew about as much about the art of soldiering as we ever would know from being in camps, so that we did not much mind how soon it was before we were sent to join our battalions in the forward areas, We knew it would not be long from now before we would be “sent up the line”, as one day we had to pass a kind of examination at the “Bull Ring” and were passed as a company fit to proceed to the front and from thence onward during the next few days, our training materially slackened and instead of going to the training ground each day, we frequently route marched without rifles or equipment to a place called Paris Plage, a famous watering point below Boulogne and were there allowed to bathe in the sea.

Then we were issued with our final equipment and were subjected to kit inspections and medical inspections and a dozen and one other events happened, which all pointed to our speedy despatch to the line. During this short period of inaction, we mostly filled in our time in writing letters home to our friends and relatives and when not engaged in that occupation, generally went for walks. During one of our walks, we came across the spot where the Zeppelin airship which bombed Etaples Depot on Anzac Day, 1916, dropped its bombs. One fell between two hospital wards but fortunately failed to explode. Another fell in the woods on the west of the camp and exploded and blew a hole 10 ft. deep x 15 ft. wide at the top, whilst fragments of the bomb perforated some pine trees 40 yards away. They say that there was great excitement in the depot but no panic and the airship was soon driven off by aeroplanes.

One day, having nothing in particular to occupy us, Harold Mitchell and I went down to the fence bordering the railway station as we were wont to do and to watch the trains full of supplies and troops going to and coming from the forward area, and on this particular occasion, saw several hospital trains bearing wounded men going to the base hospital. We gathered from their talk that a big offensive had begun up in the Somme area in which the Australians had taken part and had suffered heavily in the taking of Pozieres. This news rather interested us as we knew that it meant the sending of reinforcements at an early date, which would doubtless be sent from our depot. That we were correct in our surmise was shown by the fact that on July 6th, twenty details and new men including Harold Mitchell, Bert Allen, Harry Carberry and me were ordered to stand by in readiness to proceed to join our battalion at a moment’s notice.

After waiting in expectation for two days, we were informed that at present we were not wanted. In the meantime, our main interest was the hospital trains as they passed through Etaples railway station, and we spent all our spare time there getting first hand news of the incidents of the big battle on the Somme of which the papers were full every day. Some of the wounded were frightfully chopped about, some had faces torn about, others were minus legs and arms, but one and all seemed bright and cheerful at the prospect of a spell away from the scene of battle, in spite of their sufferings.

However, I must say that such sights did not dampen our ardour very much, as by this time we were all quite keen on getting into the firing line, as we were heartily sick and tired of the monotonous training and confinement to camp, and longed to try our mettle in the doing of the job we had sailed from our home shores to do.

One afternoon, whilst waiting for orders to proceed to the front and not having anything in particular to do at the time, we made our way to the hospital camp below our depot on the south west side. One block of tents was full of German wounded prisoners who had just been captured. Some were only slightly wounded but some were in a very bad way, but they all received excellent attention at the hands of our nurses and orderlies, for which some of them did not show much gratitude, one or two even being guilty of spitting in the faces of the sisters as they attended to their wounds. Of course, they were all under guard with sentries posted at every door and gate with fixed bayonets, and we were only able to gaze vulgarly at them through the barbed wire enclosure. So soon as they became fit to leave the hospital, they were taken to the various concentration camps throughout France and there spent the remaining years of the war working at road mending and other labouring work.

On July 11th, we were again given orders to stand by in readiness to proceed to the front but were again informed that we were not required. At the time, I could not understand why they should keep warning us and then not send us to join the battalion, and even now I do not know what was the reason, but I remember that we did not worry much since when ordered to “Stand by” it meant that we performed no parades or duties, but just simply loafed about with our gear packed and did nothing at all. Things went on in this style until July 26th, 1916 came round and we four with about 15 other men were again warned to stand by for the third time.