th our trenches
wandering through their orchard.

In Gallipoli there were brigade headquarters in the actual fire
trenches. From the headquarters of the division or the corps you could
reach the line by ten minutes' hard walking, any time. It is a Sabbath
day's journey here--indeed, the only possible way of covering the longer
distances regularly is by motor-car or motor-cycle, and no one dreams of
using any other means. Nearly the whole army, except the troops in the
actual firing-line, lives in a country which is populated by its normal
inhabitants.

And--wherein lies the greatest change of all--the troops in the trenches
themselves can be brought back every few days into more or less normal
country, and have always the prospect before them at the end of a few
months of a stay in surroundings that are completely free from shell or
rifle fire, and within reach of village shops and the normal comforts
of civilisation. And throwing the weather and wet trenches and the rest
all in, that difference more than makes up for all of them.

"You see, a fellow must look after himself a bit," one of them said to
me the other day. "A man didn't take any care how he looked in
Gallipoli; but here with these young ladies about, you can't go around
like what we used to there."

Through one's mind there flashed well-remembered figures, mostly old
slouch hat and sunburnt muscle--the lightest uniform I can recollect was
an arrangement of a shirt secured by safety pins. Here they go more
carefully dressed than if they were on leave in Melbourne or Sydney.

Yesterday the country was _en fete_, the roads swarming with young and
old, and the fields with children picking flowers. The guns were bumping
a few miles away--mostly at aeroplanes. I went to the trenches with a
friend. Our last sight, as we came away from the region of them, was of
a group of French boys and girls and a few elders around a haystack; and
half a dozen big Australians, with rolled shirtsleeves, up on the
farming machinery helping them to do the work of the year.

That is _the_ difference.

CHAPTER VI

THE GERMANS

_France, May._

The night air on every side of us was full of strange sound. It was not
loud nor near, but it was there all the time. We could hear it even
while we talked and above the sound of our footsteps on the cobbles of
the long French highway. Ahead of us, and far on either side, came this
continuous distant rattle. It was the sound