THE FIGHTERS The loaded limbers trenchward wend, the straining horses churning The slush upon the cobbled road that takes them to the fray, And far ahead in lurid tints the fires of war are burning And leprous white the poplar stumps that line the soldiers' way. The great rage smites the heavy world and tears the sky asunder (Oh! silent forms that bow and bend beneath the heavy load!) The East aflame with war's red strife and riot of its thunder (Poor weary boys that wend their way along the shrapnelled road.) Oh! hearts that follow, wish them luck and strength in sleep and waking, These gallant youths that come and go through all the gloomy night To labour on the mighty job; its stress and toil unshaking The fire and faith of mighty souls that battle for the right. Oh! Heaven light their darkest hour and send them safely through it To reach the goal of their desires and see the struggle through. The way is rough and hard the fight. God give them strength to do it, To weather through and finish up the work they've come to do. CHAPTER II VILLERS-BRETONNEUX Broken walls, littered streets, charred roof-beams rising in tortured disarray over the piles of red brick rubbish, stumps of trees, rusty entanglements, battered barricades, pitted pavements, disbanded vehicles and derelict guns. This is Villers-Bretonneux, the village from which the Australians drove the Germans on the night of April 24-25. The story of the attack, of which we have read so many accounts, was again told to me by an officer as we stopped for a while in the village to see the ground over which the men of the South proved their worth in what we hope will be the last battle of the Somme. Amiens is the last fringe of civilization. Beyond that we come into the dead world which was over-run by the German hordes in the summer of 1918. In the late days of August when the battle lines were penetrated by them an approach to open warfare was reached. Endless streams of infantry in field grey streaked through and over the British defences and pushed forward behind light machine guns which now not alone covered the advance from the rear, but opened up a path by working from the front of the attacking soldiery. Under such protection the Germans dribbled through, taking all available shelter, fighting from behind clumps of trees and broken walls, firing from folds in the earth and newly formed shell-holes and driving the men in khaki in front of them. But Villers-Bretonneux, like a mighty rock, withstood the invasion of the war storm and here it broke itself against the barrier of flesh and blood which was Britain in arms.