THE DIGGERS THE AUSTRALIANS IN FRANCE BY PATRICK MACGILL With an Introduction by THE RT. HON. W. M. HUGHES HERBERT   JENKINS   LIMITED 3 YORK STREET, SAINT JAMES'S LONDON S.W.1     MCMXIX Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Frome and London TO W. P....

By the Rt. Hon. W. M. Hughes My dear Mr. MacGill ,— From the day on which The Children of the Dead End came into my hands, I have been amongst the most devoted of your worshippers. In this and in your later books, your genius has won world-wide recognition, and no words of mine are needed to commend to your very wide circle of readers this story of the achievements of the Australian soldiers in France. The imperishable deeds of Australia's glorious soldiers have carved for themselves a deep nich

In the afternoon of October 11, 1918, I found myself with a party travelling out from Amiens and taking the straight road that runs eastwards towards St. Quentin across the war harried fields of the Somme. We had just passed through a country where the harvest was gathered in, where the hay ricks and cornstacks stood high round the ancient farmhouses, and we were now in a country where Death had reaped its sad harvest for over four years, where all was ruin and decay—a spread of demolition and d

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 gro

We passed through Lamotte-en-Santerre, a village in complete ruin like all other villages on the road eastwards from Amiens. The road to Hamel branches off here, and we were shown the place from a distance, Hamel, where the Australians fought side by side with the Americans and came to know the worth of the New Allies which had entered the war. The Australians often speak of the Americans. The former are very proud of the fact that the Yankees on their first attack were attached to the Diggers,

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 th

On the day following our visit to Peronne we motored out to Bellicourt to see the Hindenburg tunnel, of which rumour and reading tell us so much. This tunnel was built by Hindenburg, we are told, and if ever the British troops crossed the German defences the enemy soldiers would conceal themselves in thousands, come out when our men had passed by, attack them in rear and cut them to pieces. The Hindenburg trenches might be crossed, but the Hindenburg tunnel would be the ruin of the Allies. This

It was grey noon and we found ourselves on a flat-backed bluff that rose from the marshes of the Somme. At the base of this bluff could be seen many openings, telling of the Germans who had once dug into the place, fashioning little homes in the wet clay. The German is a burrowing animal and it is safe to say that for every shell left by him in his flight across the Somme (and they are many) he has left a corresponding dug-out. These carefully constructed shelters are to be seen in all localitie

There is a certain grave near Peronne, and in it rests a German machine gunner, and though the cross over the grave testifies to the valour of the dead man it also is witness to the chivalry of the men who buried him there. The men were Australian soldiers, brave Diggers who advanced to the attack and after making rapid strides they were held up by the fire of a solitary machine gun that stood immovable in the rout as a rock in running water. Round it the retreating army was withering like snow

We went to the town of Cambrai on October 13, a famous day in the history of the town, for it was then that the British handed the town, captured by them from the Germans, over to the French. Sir Douglas Haig and Premier Clemenceau were there: the French troops furnishing a guard of honour. In the distance, while the French were playing the Marseillaise on the town square, we could hear the dull thud of shells bursting in the fields outside the city. In the afternoon a solemn thanksgiving for th

The café was crowded, for the Diggers out of the trenches were making the most of their short stay in the back area. To-morrow or the day after they would be going back again and anything might happen up there. "Laugh and be happy, for to-morrow we die," seemed to be the motto of the evening. The place was crowded, principally with Australian soldiers, though here and there in the room, sitting at tables playing dominoes, were a number of Frenchmen. Cordial relations bind the poilu and the Digge