Page:The drama of three hundred and sixty-five days.djvu/117

SCENES IN THE GREAT WAR names of the townsmen who had joined the colours. In every little shop window along the high road to Bath there were portraits of the King, Kitchener, Jellicoe, French, and Joffre, flanked sometimes by pictures of poor, burnt and blackened Belgium.

On the edge of Dartmoor, in Drake's old town, Tavistock, I saw a thrilling sight—thrilling yet simple and quite familiar. Eight hundred men were leaving for France. In the cool of the evening they drew up with their band, four square in the market-place under the grey walls of the parish church, a thousand years old. The men of a regiment remaining behind had come to see their comrades off, bringing their own band with them. For a short half-hour the two bands played alternately, "Tipperary," "Fall In," "We Don't want to Lose You," and all the other homely but stirring ditties with which Tommy has cheered his soul. The open windows round the square were full of faces, the balconies were crowded, and some of the townspeople were perched on the housetops. Suddenly the church clock struck eight, the hour for departure; a bugle sounded; a loud voice gave the word of command like a shot out of a musket; it was repeated by a score of other sharp voices running down the line, and then the two bands, and the men, and all the people in the windows, on the balconies and on the roofs (except such of Rh