Preface

PREFACE.

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The purpose of this work will be accomplished if, in future ears, a glance at its pages serves to awaken in the minds of my late comrades of "I" Company the memories of the months we have just spent in out country's service.

I claim for my account no literary merit. It has been my object to write simply a record of incidents which impressed themselves upon my mind or the mind of the comrades who witnessed them.
I must thank my numerous friends in the company - officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates - who have given me valuable assistance. To have attempted a complete account of our share in the campaign from my own recollection would have been impossible; but my comrades filed in, by the aid of their diaries, the missing links in the chain of events, and I trust that at least the more important of our doings have been sufficiently recorded.

This chronicle does not report every minor aspect, but the things mentioned will recall to memory many others, and I leave it to my late comrades-in-arms to fill in from the storehouse of their minds such details as will complete these word-pictures, which I have only drawn in rough outline.
Possibly some of the paragraphs contained in the following pages will read as though we were, at times, dissatisfied with our undertaking. Such, however, was not the case - at any rate for longer than ten minuets on any occasion; and then only when some order which appeared to us unnecessary or even absurd was issued, or when one of our men suffered what seemed, to our minds, too severe a punishment for some trifling offence.

Our company officers did all they could for out comfort, and by their leniency kept many a man's sheet free from bad records. Some "crimes," in the military sense, could not be overlooked, but these were few and far between. We were ever ready to do our duty, grumbling or otherwise, and I don't think our officers had much trouble to ensure discipline.

The letters from Major Pearse are the best character our Company can claim, and of such a testimony and Volunteer Company may well be proud.

I trust that you who read the following pages will bear in mind that they were written by a private soldier, and, in consequence, be generous in your judgement. I offer merely a record of facts without exaggeration, and unembellished by fiction. I have endeavoured to express in words what we, of the Company, have personally experienced.

To my comrades I now commend "The Records of 'I' Company," trusting they will find them satisfactory, and that the book will at least serve to keep in mind the name of one who has shared with them an act of patriotic duty, and for whose many kindnesses he has deepest feelings of gratitude.

A.G. GARRISH.
July 22nd, 1901.

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