The next day we lined up for a final medical inspection. As we passed
the doctor there were none to congratulate us, but we made allowances,
knowing how sore the others were who had failed to qualify. We packed
up our kits and marched to the train leaving a camp literally "green
with envy." We shouted good-bye, amazed at the good fortune that had
chosen us to escape many months of deadly grind in the training-camp,
and it seemed as we passed in single file through the old showground
turnstile as if already we had left Australia behind, and in
imagination our feet felt the roll of the ship that in our fancy was
even now carrying us out on the "Great Adventure"; and our thoughts
wafted farewells to mother or wife, as we bade them never fear but that
we would show that their men were not unworthy of their regard.

Our spirits had not been so elated had we known that more weeks of camp
life in Australia yet awaited us. Had we not thought that we were
destined for immediate embarkation we might have been better disposed
to appreciate Broadmeadows, but as it was it seemed to us about the
last place made--and not yet finished.

As the days passed, our detestation of the place grew, but we soon
found that our impatience of delay in embarking was shared by several
thousand others who had gathered there from many States and been weeks
trampling out the grass and raising the dust in those accursed fields
till it choked them, when they had long before expected to be inhaling
the ozone from the deck of some good ship that with every knot bore
them nearer to the strife for liberty and a man's chance.

This camp was always seething with discontent, for with the delay was
in every man's heart the haunting fear that the war might be over ere
he got there, and none could think without dread of the possibility
that we might have to endure the lowest depths of humiliation in
returning home without having struck a blow.

On one occasion the impatience that was like a festering sore among the
men of this camp nearly resulted in a show of mutiny. Oil was added to
the flame of our discontent by the tactlessness of the camp adjutant.
He will always be known to the men of those days as the "Puppy." His
father was a commanding officer, and though he was only nineteen years
of age and his voice was just breaking, he rode the "high-horse of
authority" over those men as though they were schoolchildren. When his
lady friends came to visit