"THE AUSSIES"

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 154, 1 May 1940, Page 2

"THE AUSSIES"

SEEN THROUGH AMERICAN EYES The Anzaes are hack in the war, writes a special correspondent of tiie New York Times Magazine. Perhaps somewhere along the roads of Palestine the salutation, "II ya, Digger" sounds again as big, loose-limb-ed men in out-iandish (to the pure military mind) eoslumes pass one another. The news that the first Australian and New Zealand troops were on hand again stirred a good many memories anionic Americans who served in Franco, particular! v anions the men of New York's Tw enly-si> ven th Division. 'fhe Austral ians had the gift of becoming legends. In the first place there was their swati»cr, heightened by the loose, big-pocketed coats that looked very .much as American sport jackets were Lo look in the Nineteen Twenties; and then, there were their slouch hats, the brim held up over one ear by the bronze Australian pin. 'fhe Australians seemed to be on hand for a day's sport rather than a war; alone among the men in France, they were all volunteers. They seemed uniformly big and uniformly tough. Coming to France from the Dardanelles, they casually saluted their own officers with a sort of wave of the hand, calmly ignored the officers of other nations' and for a while, created a good deal of with their British cousins. Finally, however, this was over come with the realisation, as expressed by a tired British provost marshal in Abbeville who liad finally straightened out a behind-the-lines brawl, that they were "damn poor soldiers, but they light like hell."