"On the day when we attacked on that ridge across there an officer of the infantry came in an aeroplane to take part in the attack," said the driver of the car when we came to a momentary stop on the St. Quentin road. He pointed his finger towards a bluff that rose from the Somme and stood a little higher than the country round it. "He was an officer, hit on the head by a splinter of shell a few days before the attack, and sent to hospital at the base," said the driver. "Word that his battalion was going to cross the bags reached him, and he implored permission to return, as his wound was healed. But the doctors wouldn't allow him to go. On being told this he went to a mate of his, an airman who was flying towards the front, and asked for a lift. He was given a lift, and got in touch with his battalion in time to get into the attack." Isolated incidents like these show the temper of the men, their desire to be in the midst of the fighting, the devotion and enthusiasm of soldiers who have crossed miles of sea to do their bit in the great war which has tortured Europe for so many years. Of her record in the war Australia may well be proud. THE KHAKI LADS Along the road in the evening the brown battalions wind, With the trenches' threat of death in front, the peaceful homes behind; And luck is with them or luck is not, as the tickets of Fate are drawn-- The boys go up to the trench at dusk, but who will come back at dawn? The winds come soft of an evening o'er the fields of golden grain, And good sharp scythes will cut the corn ere we come back again-- The village girls will tend the grain and mill the Autumn yield, While we go forth to other work upon another field. They'll cook the big brown Flemish loaves and tend the oven fire, And while they do the daily toil of barn and bench and byre They'll think of hearty fellows gone and sigh for them in vain The billet boys, the khaki lads who won't return again. CHAPTER IV MONT ST. QUENTIN It was on the bank of the Somme Canal in the early morning, Peronne in the distance, and a light railway track at our feet. The place was Brie. We had arrived there the previous night. The railway track was torn and twisted, rails sticking into the air at oblique angles, sleepers charred, chairs smashed, the bed of the four-foot way churned and broken, with the waggons and trucks which once ran along them smashed to fragments, thrown hither and thither, out into the canal on the right or into the fields on the left side of the line. Looking at the riverscape one could see in the near distance a broken bridge with the sluggish water rippling lazily round the buttresses which yet remained, and near at hand, though the day was chilly, three naked soldiers stood on a boat making ready to dive into the oily water.