CHAPTER II

TO THE FRONT

_France, April 8th._


So the Australians are in France. A great reception at the port of
landing, so we hear. A long, weary train journey in a troop train which
never alters its pace, but moves steadily on, halts for meals, jogs on
again, waits interminably outside strange junctions. Some days ago it
landed the first units, somewhere behind the front.

We reached France some time after the first units. The excitement of
seeing an Australian hat had long since evaporated. A few troops had
been left in camp near the port, and we met some of those on leave in
the big town. They might have been there since their babyhood for all
they or the big town cared.

And there we first heard mentioned the name of a town to which our
troops were supposed to have gone. It was quite a different town from
the one which we had heard of on board ship. It was snowing up there
where our men were, they said.

The train took us through beautiful country not yet touched by the
spring of the year. There were magnificent horses in the rich brown
fields--great draught horses such as I have never seen in any country
yet. But the figure that drove the harrow was always that of an old man
or a young boy; or, once or twice, of a woman. There were women digging