the front. Presently a French regiment went by along a country road--not
at all unlike our Australian troops in some ways--biggish fellows in
grey-blue overcoats, all singing a jolly song. They waved to us in the
same light-hearted way Australians have. There were more fair-haired
men, among some of the French troops we have seen, than there would be
in one of our own battalions.

After this there came great stores at intervals, and timber yards--hour
after hour of farmhouses and villages where there was a Tommy in every
doorway, Tommies in every barn, a Tommy's khaki jacket showing through
every kitchen window; until at last towards evening we reached a country
populated by the familiar old pea-soup overcoats and high-necked
jackets and slouch hats of Australians.

There they were, the men whom we had last seen on the Suez Canal--here
they were, already, in the orchard alongside of the old lichened,
steep-roofed barn--four or five of them squatting round a fire of
sticks, one stuffing his pipe and talking, talking, talking all the
while. I knew that they were happy there before ever they said it. A
track led across a big field--there were two Australians walking along
it. A road crossed the railway--two Australians were standing at the
open door of the house, and another talking to the kiddies in the
street. There was a platoon of them drilling behind a long barn.

A long way ahead of that, still going through an Australian country, we
stopped; and a policeman showed us to the station entrance where there
was a motor-car which took us and our baggage to the little house where
we were billeted. On the green door of the house next to it, behind the
pretty garden, was scrawled in chalk, "Mess--five officers." That was
where we were to feed.