Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 8]
unfortunate kid had to hang on one of the net posts. It read "FOR OFFICERS ONLY" and the "boys could have been shot for what they didn't say out loud about it. The perfidious sisters - God forgive them! - turned up later and for the considerable period up to when it got dark, they and the officers played, while the court-makers/dumb and sullen hung, round. I was sick from powerlessness. To them the Zummerset man said - "You talk a lot abeaout yer Australian democracy and English snobbery but, ye're failin' inter it yerselves." "They wasn't like that, not till they come here" said the Diggers - "may their etc., etc. !! – them!!! the ----s!!!!" And I felt for them all the way.
I was glad when the time came to go to floor, with one ground sheet and one blanket. In the distance the rumble of the boche guns could be heard and against this sombre, tonal background a nightingale threw a wonderful liquid pattern of song. Larks in Gallipoli and nightingales in Picardy! Shelley and Keats to the accompaniment of Hell's orchestra! Love and Hate as foils to each other.
In the morning a stray youth who was going part of the way, offered to show me the road as far as he was going, so, with all of my things, excepting my painting outfit, we set out, our goal a point where motor- lorries could be hailed. By luck we had only gone a hundred yards when from this comparative backwater, along came the necessary vehicle and in we got. It took us as far as the place where I had to change and there I caught another, that landed me within a mile of where I am now writing. I'm dead beat - continue to-morrow