On the outbreak of the war I joined the Royal Fusiliers, uninfluenced by the appeal of wall-posters or the blandishments of a recruiting sergeant. My former experience as a trooper in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry being accounted unto me for military righteousness, I sailed with my regiment from Southampton on September 3rd, 1914. We thought we were bound for France direct, and only discovered on the passage that we were to be landed, first, at Malta.