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[Page 139]
6
is as honey to the weary bee : you have to shake hands in silence and with a heavy heart to appreciate it. They are grand, real men.
Well, Alan, you've forfeited your reward, the great victorious home-coming, but all our lives we won't forget your broken pillar. I just can't write any more."
Under this cloud of pathetic sadness, Dene, at Perham Down, a few days later,
"commenced hard training. Reveille goes at 6 a.m. when it is quite dark. Breakfast is at 7, there being no early morning parade, and first parade is at 8. The hours are 8 to 12 30, and 1 30 to 5 : these are long hours for hard work. It is dark when we get up, and dark when we return to our huts. The food is scanty but good. There is lots of guard and fatigue work, too, making the work longer : but it's soldiering now, and our next move will be, France."
Dene had gone the voyage as a sergeant, but on arrival in England the Australian N.C.Oships are not recognised, and he and his fellow N.C.Os all reverted to the ranks. On 12 November, 1916, he was selected as one of ten drafted to go to France at the earliest reinforcement, and says
"our training is strenuous, mostly rapid firing, bayonet fighting, rushing trenches, stabbing and using butts, and gas helmet drill. It is dreadfully cold, and the rifle chisels junks of skin from your hands and knuckles. Our feet get like blocks of ice standing at musketry practice, and the rifle is so cold we can hardly do anything with it. It rains nearly every day and we often get wet through But they give us no latitude.
16 November, reveille went at 4 a.m., and we moved off for France. My ! it was cold. A few old pals get up to see us off. At the orderly room the Major said a few words about the honour of the glorious First Brigade, and the band played us to Tidworth railway station, a cold march of two miles. At 6 30, just as dawn was breaking we boarded the troop train for Folkestone. Many Australians greeted us from the verandahs. We stayed an hour or so, then all marched to the steamer. At 2 40 p.m. we left England. We simply flew across the Channel, escorted with three torpedo boats, a destroyer ahead, and an aeroplane circled above us.
It was 6 p.m. as we marched up the cobbled streets of old Boulogne to the rest camp on a big windy cold and cheerless hill north of the town. The morning broke cold, dull and cheerless, the water was frozen in the taps. It was bitter : I could not do my pockets up after washing. The roads are cobbled and marching is very tiring. My feet tingle and throb after a few miles of it. Of course we travel with all we own on our backs, and 24 hours' rations in our haversacks."
Dene describes the severe drilling and marching over a large part of the surface of France, untill at length on the 2 December, 1916, his small squad of reinforcements joined the well known "brown over green", the