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[Page 71]
corps commander, who will send them back to Germany with messages on them. It was they who planted our flag farthest east for our toys to rally to; which of course they did and are now beyond it. The Hun got a fearful artillery strafe before he could get away or surrender and the craters mostly impinge on and even overlap each other. In one place I saw four Hun machine-gunners and their gun in a shell crater. A tank had gone over it and them - exeunt omnes [all gone]. The cavalry did wonderful feats - capturing trains and transports, guns, prisoners. Our men, of course, are peerless. They always go one better than the next best. So exact, so dashing, so gallant. Half an hour after the barrage stopped our 18 pdrs, were in their new positions - a record. No hampering time-limit, laid down in bow and arrow days, was foisted on them and they romped into the brawl and gained their objectives in jig time, beating all previous records. Ah, but they're the bonnie fechters! [fighters] Even some of the English admit it - The French, Americans, Scotch and Huns did so long ago. I saw a bunch of them, on bikes, loaded up like pack horses, fags and pipes in their mouths, in sleeveless shirts and WITH DRUMS, TRUMPETS, TROMBONES, etc., up, going up to the front line; so as to have some music up there! Life size band instruments, if you please. In a dug out under a crudely scratched portrait of our general I saw scrawled up:- Gen. Sir Wm. Birdwood. K.C.S.I., K.C.B., K.C.M.G., etc.,
ALSO ENTITLED TO WEAR AN AUSSIE HAT.
They are full of booty. At one cage of newly brought in Huns an almost equal number of "diggers" were bargaining for souvenirs on the barter system. It was bread, bully beef, cheese or cigarettes for photographs, belts, caps, watches, pistols, or any trinkets the Huns might have remaining to them. The trade was brisk, the chief difficulty was the passing through the swathes of barbed wire of the exchanged articles. I got a Mauser for little son and some other souvenirs.
France, 10/8/18.
VILLERS BRETONNEUX.
Since yesterday the good news has been steadily coming in. My impression is chiefly of a very long and very straight