starts. There has been a fairly warm billet in the
half dark of a big barn, where the morning light comes through in
strange shafts and triangles up in the blackness amongst the gaunt roof
beams. There was a canteen--which is really an officially managed shop
for good, cheap groceries--in an outhouse at the end of the village;
there were three or four estaminets and cafes, with cheerful and
passably pretty mademoiselles, and good coffee, and very vile wine,
labelled temporarily as champagne. There was also--for some who obtained
leave--a visit to a neighbouring town.

The battalion moved off early--its much-prized brass band at its
head--and the men who didn't obtain leave at the tail. The battalion is
to be carried to the front in the same string of groaning autobuses
which brought out its weary predecessors. The buses are a great help
immensely valued--but the battalion has to march four miles to them--to
warm it, I suppose. The men who did not obtain leave are carrying the
iron cooking dixies for those four miles. In the nature of things
military, there will be another four miles to march at the other end.
The platoon at the tail thoroughly appreciates this. Its philosophy of
life is wasted, unfortunately, on four miles of stately, dripping French
elm trees which cannot understand, and one richly appreciative
Australian subaltern who can.

The battalion was not disappointed. The motor-buses brought it to a most
comfortable-looking village--pretty well as good as the one it had left.
It climbed out, and straightaway marched to another village five miles
distant. The darkness had come down--huge motor-wagons shouldered them
off the road into gutters, where they found themselves ankle deep in the
mud-heaps scraped by the road gangs. Every second wagon blinded them
with its two glaring gig-lamps, and slapped up the mud on to their
cheeks. A mule wagon, trotting up behind, splashed it into their back
hair, where they found it in dry beads of assorted sizes next morning.
It was raining dismally. The head of the column was commenting richly on
its surroundings--the platoon at the tail had ceased to comment at all.
The last couple were a pair who, I will swear, must have tramped
together many a long road over the Old Man Plains towards the evening
sun--old felt hats slightly battered; grim, set lips, knees and backs a
little bent with the act of carrying; and pack, oil sheet, mess tin
rising heavenwards in one mighty hump