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[Page 42]
-11-
loaded with wounded being taken to hospitals and ships. Sea planes circling overhead, destroyers ever watchful, taking their places alongside the channel boats, others disembarking large numbers of troops, who falling into line marched with steady tramp to the Railway Station to take their places in the firing line and fill the ever increasing gaps. The whole thing seemed so big and fraught with such tremendous issues, that I just felt unable to take it in but was thrilled with satisfaction, that there in the heart of that big Base I was doing my bit.
On my second day a Major called to see his sister, one of my staff, and found that he had been to Queensland for Colonial experience on the next station to Ron, when at Darra River Downs. He was leaving the next day for Italy.
The next few mornings I noticed and remarked an aeroplane that flew over the town at the same time each morning, but had no idea that the Pilot could be anyone in whom I was especially interested. I had the boys' Postal addresses, but that in military requirements did not convey to me their districts, and on account of my moving round it was some days before their letters reached me in reply to my telling them I was in France. The first came from Ron saying he had just returned to Head Quarters and collected his mail, which had accumulated owing to his absence on duty for a week as a Ferry Pilot, and it was his machine that I had seen each morning, and the aerodrone from which he started only ten miles away. He explained that he was only about forty five miles off and would be able to call any day that the weather was "dud" for flying.
At the end of the week he surprised me by arriving in time for supper and my joy at seeing him was just boundless. It seemed strange indeed to greet him there in military surroundings, both of us in the service of the British War Office. When he called the next morning we went out to "do" the town and ran into Colonel Springthorpe who was in France on a special mission in connexion with shock cases. He invited us to lunch at the Criterion