By Tuesday morning the weather had mended and a notice on the boards warned “Draft X” to parade at 1200 hours and “Draft Y” to stand by for a possible move at 2200 hours.
“Draft X” packed happily and “Draft Y” said: “Just our perishing luck, a night crossing.”
At 1230 “Draft X”, which consisted of about a hundred and twenty men, climbed into six three-tonners and were carried down to the quay. Here they dismounted, formed column of threes, and marched for about four hundred yards along the quay, carrying their baggage, whilst the lorries, now empty, drove beside them. This was such a normal military manoeuvre that it caused no comment.
At the end of the quay was a large shed, and the column was directed behind this, turned left, and told to sit down and wait.
The first ten men, who had formed the leading files and were thus on the right hand end of the line, found themselves fallen out and marched round the corner of the shed, and out of the sight of their comrades.
The older hands began to scratch their heads. This was a variation from the normal, and therefore suspect. How the rumour started no one knew, but it spread with the speed of a prairie-fire, and, as is the way with rumours, it grew in the spreading.
“’Ave you ‘eard what they’re doing? Those ten blokes wot went orf first. Searching ‘em? I’ll say they’re searching ‘em. Stripped to the skin. Yus. There’s about fifty coppers – plain-clo’es men, beside the Customs. What’s it all about? Smugglin’ or somethin’. ‘Eard about Nobby? That gold ring he had off the signoreena. ‘E’d put it in the middle of a bully-sandwich, in ‘is ‘aversack ration. Artful, he? But you know what happened—they ‘ad a — great magnet. Electromagnet—yus. That hauled it out, quick as a dose of salts.”
Ten more men were led off.
The depression deepened among the remaining hundred. Almost all of them were smugglers in a small way – a hundred cigarettes, a Jerry watch, a bottle of Anisette, a phial of dubious scent from Venice or Milan.
Another quarter of an hour passed, and the Embarkation Officer appeared and gave an order. The remaining men were fallen in and marched on board the waiting transport.
Here they found the first twenty victims, and the general amazement grew. Apparently no one had been searched at all.
“Searched!” said an undersized rifleman. “Whatcher talking about. We bin sitting here kicking our — heels waiting for you—s to come on board.”
“One more M.F.U.,” was the general verdict of the mystified draft.