It was on the 29th March 1915 when we left Chelmsford to go to France. We had a right royal send-off. We went away over from Folkestone to Boulogne, early hours of the morning. When we got to Boulogne, we marched through Boulogne and as we went through the streets the people were leaning out the bedroom windows, cheering us, ever so pleased to see us then. So we went into a camp on the hill outside Boulogne. Well, I think we stayed there a matter of a couple of days and then we was moved away from there to the front. Well, old Sid and I, we were still together all the bloomin' time, we never literally left each other's side, didn't matter what happened we stuck together all the time.

But prior to getting to the front, everybody - 'course it was all excitement, it was a novelty, and as you got nearer you could hear the rumble of the guns. Well, it seemed so fascinating to young chaps, to get there and the feeling 'Ooh we're getting near it' and and ooh, you know, excitement, and all that sort of thing - 'Where are we going?' Eventually we landed at Armentieres. The only there was, we were sent up to what they called 'gunfire baptism'. Now if that wasn't a hell of a waste, you never heard of it. Fancy telling you to go and learn you what it was like to be under shellfire when you'd got to be under it in a matter of a day or two., but no, that was it. Now that was the first casualty of the Buckinghamshire Battalion happened on that day: because we had to go up, they took us up in what they called diamond formation, artillery formation, and the Germans started shelling, we went out in the open and they started shelling, and I'll always remember, the shells was ever so high. One of our chaps had a piece hit him and they carried him into a monastery, very close, just outside Armentieres, and he died, and this chap's name was Billy Holland from Newport Pagnell and he was the first casualty in the Buckinghamshire Battalion.