HOW THE ANZACS GAME TO FRANCE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3251, 5 July 1916, Page 71

HOW THE ANZACS GAME TO FRANCE.

AND HOW THEY HAD A TREEFELLING CONTEST WITH THE FRENCH WOOD CUTTERS. France has been thrown into a- new fervour of enthusiasm for Britain by the arrival there of splendid fight ing men from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India, to take their places in the trenches. Mr Philip Gibbs gives a charming account in the Daily Cnronicle of the arrival of the Anzacs in France. The First Sight.— “It was fine —the first sight of them in France unexpectedly. I came upon them one day in an old town behind the lines, where British soldiers are (always passing through to the roads which lead up to the trenches. It was market day, and the Grande place (not very grand) was filled with booths and old ladies in black, and young girls with chequered aprons over their black frocks, and pigs and clucking fowls and the cheerful clatter of a busy crowd. “ Suddenly the people scattered, and there was a great rumble and rattle of w'heels as a long line of transport waggons came through the square. “‘By Jove! . . . Australians 1’ “ There was no mistaking them. Their slouch hats told one at a "glance, but without them I should have known. They have a distinctive type of their own which marks them out from all other soldiers of ours along these roads of war. Grace in the Saddle. — “ They were hatchet-faced fellows who came riding through the little old market town ; British unmistakably, yet not English, nor Irish, nor Scottish, nor Canadian. They looked hard, with the hardiness of a boyhood and a breeding away from the cities, or at least away from the softer training of our way' of life. They had merry eyes (especially for the girls round the stalls), but resolute clean-cut mouths, and they rode their horses with an easy grace in the saddle as though born to riding, and drove their waggons with a recklessness among the little booths that was justified by half an inch between an iron axle and an old woman s table of coloured ribbons. “These clean-shaven, sun-tanned, dustcovered boys who had come out of the hell-fire of the Dardanelles and the great drought of Egyptian sands looked wonderfully fresh in Prance. Youth, keen as steel, with a flash in the eyes, with an utter carelessness of any peril ahead, came riding down the street. Since then I have seen thousands of them behind the lines, where they have been waiting to ‘go in.’ They * have been billeted in areas through "which many British divisions have passed after a brief spell of rest, and about these old farmhouses and barns and village inns which will be haunted always by the memory of this British occupation," the Australians have made themselves at home with the French inhabitants.

A Good Country to Fight For.— " They are glad to be here. Everything is* new and good to them (though so old and stale to many of us), and, after their adventures in the East, they find it splendid to be in a civilised country, with water in the sky and in the fields, with green trees about them, and flowers in the grass, and white people who are friendly. " When they came up in the train from a southern port in France they were all at the windows drinking in the look of the French landscape, and one of their officers tells me that again and again he heard the same words spoken by these lads of his : ' It's, a good country to fight for. . . . It's like being home again.' "They have already been in the trenches, surprised to find how near they are to the enemy's line, and not dismayed by the look of the barbed wire out there". Whatever may happen along the Western front, it is good to have these Australians with us. "They strengthen the line, and give one a sense of greater power, and take their places by right and merit side by side witli our own divisions who have held these lines with noble courage and patience through many months of endless shell-fire. The enemy will be sorry that. the Australians-have come. —lt AVas in Such a Wood.—

" Thev have come at the right lime of the vour. ;i!h! that makes a difference to the" spirit* of these Nature-loving men." adds Mr Gibbs. "Even within of the barbed wire the trees look fresh and green—the. trees that have not been killed by shell-fire, —and behind the trenches there are pleasant woods, with glades through which the sun strikes slant-wise, upon violets and the little

white stars of the stitchwort, and last year's leaves, so that the Australians round their camp fires or outside their wooden huts find their life a 'picnic,' and do not think much of the -risks up there in the line. "It was in such a wood that Shakespeare would have loved, because of the shimmer among the heech leaves and the long vistas of tall, straight trunks, that some of the Australians came across a party of French wood-cutters —soldiers of the Territorial class, and very crafty with the axe.

"The Australians looked on while a tree was polled, and then one of them put a friendly challenge to the biggest and brawniest Frenchman.

" ' I guess I can beat you at that game, old son.'

" The ' poilu ' laughed, understanding the signs, if not the speech, of the tall brown iad in the slouch hat. He laughed with self-confidence, for he had a reputation as a wood-cutter not disputed by his comrades. " ' Essayez done, mon vieux! II faut couper trois, vous savez.' " Each man was to cut down three trees, and the quickest would win. A Tree-felling Contest. —

" The Australian took off his tunic and rolled up his shirt sleeves, showing the muscles of his big brown arms, so that the French soldiers whistled with admiration. He cut with clean, strong strokes, and so skilfully that the French champion looked anxious. " Nam d'un pipe, d'un pipe! but this boy is formidable !'

" But one of the trees fell across another, and there was a shout of delight from the Frenchmen. That was not allowed. It was not good style. The Frenchman would now snow liis own way with an axe.

" ' Ecgardez ! II est fort, le bonhomme,

"The French giant, for he was a big fellow with the neck and shoulders of a Roman gladiator, swung his long-handled axe so that it was like a flash oi lightning among the trees. And he won with four minutes to spare, and with superb style—which was very helpful to the Entente Cordiale.

" The news of this competition has reached the Canadians, who are ' some' wood-cutters, and they have issued a challenge to the Australians, with whom they are on terms of friendly rivalry. It is good, this little side-show in the woodlands, behind the fighting lines, where the game is not nearly so amusing."