"What are we here fer, Bill?"

"Oh, get yer head felt; any fool knows why we are here. There's a blessed
marmalade factory somewhere about, and we are going to mind it whilst the
British Tommy does the fighting."

"Marmalade be d----!" chirruped a voice down the lines. "Think they'd trust
us to look after anything so important?"

"Oh, you're a blessed prophet, you are," snarls the little bugler. "P'raps
you'll tell us what our game is."

"Easy enough, little 'un. Our officers 've got to practise making mud maps
in the dust with a stick, and we've got to fool around and keep the flies
away."

"I suppose they'll keep us at this till the war's over, and then send us to
England, 'nd give us a bloomin' medal, 'nd tell us then we are gory,
crimson heroes. Ugh!" grunts a big West Australian with a face like a
nightmare, and a voice that comes out of his chest with a sound like a
steam saw coming through a wet log.

"Don't know about England 'nd the medal, 'Beauty,'" chirrups a Sydney
gunner, "but I know what they'll give us in Australia if we go back without
a fight."

"P'raps it'll be a mansion, or a sheep station, or a stud of racehorses,"
meekly suggests a tired-looking South Australian, with a derisive twist of
his under lip.