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[Page 162]
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the Armistice brought me such sad and lonely thoughts, which risks and activity had dulled a little that I was very glad when our Division was ordered immediately after to start on a long trek by road and rail from Picquigny, near Amiens, to where we now are.
We travelled all day via Amiens, Villers Brettoneux (where I was much in the line last April & March and watched the town being shelled into its present state of disintegration), Peronne, Chaulnes Junction (where a huge Hun delay action mine "went up" not long before we passed).
We detrained at Tincourt and next day did 30 kilos to Fresnoy-le-Grand, passing through and over the "impregnable" Hindenburg line- an appalling stretch of distorted, shell pitted country, with vast crops of barbed wire entanglements, caved in trenches and broken guns.
Fresnoy-le-Grand is between Cambrai and St Quentin and though it had been in the Boches hands for about four years, was not badly battered as the Australians at Montbrehain had beaten Fritz badly causing him to fall back quickly and evacuate Fresnoy "toute suite" or "at the toots" as the Digger's say.
We stayed here about a week and at a big parade of our Brigade the "Brig." told us that we would be going to Hunland as part of the Army of occupation. This, as you will have heard, was cancelled, leaving a distinct feeling of slight to the A.I.F. as both Canada & New Zealand were represented in Germany and America, goodness alone knows why, sent a force there, equal in size to the British Army of occupation, in spite of the fact that she came into the real fighting later even than the eleventh hour.
The fact that the Huns put the "Aussies" second to none as troops to beware of, was surely