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[page 9]
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would not hold more than about 4000 men but it came in useful as a temporary camp for troops en route for the North. Marseilles is rather a fine city, spoilt by cobble streets and rattling old trams. The view from the surrounding hills is very fine especially at this time of the year when the trees were blossoming and sprouting and the wistaria and other brilliant climbers were at their best. The Riviera is certainly a glorious climate if the few days we spent there were a fair sample of the bulk. Women and old men seem to do all the work hereabouts. The women drive the trams work on the wharves ( and do quite as well as the Sydney wharfies at any rate) in the Railway yards the Factories, the trawlers, in fact do any old work previously done by the men. They do it so well that I should'nt be surprised if the Egyptian habit of "letting them do it" is popular here after the war. I think I shall settle down in the South of France when this war has finished - that is if the Huns have not made other arrangements for my future - for in addition to being good bread-winners these French girls are not half bad to look at. About every day or two in Marseilles a batch of German prisoners "arrive from the front" and are marched through the streets much to the delight of the French folk. They are accommodated on a hulk in the Harbour and from observations I made I have a shrewd suspicion that they were the same old Huns over and over again who were paraded through the streets for their daily strafing by the good people of Marseilles. It reminded me of say, a small tradesman in the suburbs who owns two carts and numbers them 19 and 26. Nothing like making an impression.
Our camp was visited in the early morning and evening by girls and women selling bread, scones, cakes, etc. mostly I think of their