AUSTRALIANS IN FRANCE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 187, 30 June 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

AUSTRALIANS IN FRANCE.

LAST STATION' BEFORE TRENCHES. ENGLISH WOMAN'S PRAISE. Mrs. Lyster Ormsby, of Sydney, has ]ust received a letter from an English friend Miss Violet Grant, which is sure to interest Australasian women because of the praise for our men contained in it. Miss Grant has been for months working at a hut at a little lonely station in France. So far out is it that it is the last at winch the men call before going into the trenches. In this letter she says:

"Two days ago (April 2) we were ! ust busy all the time with the happiest and nicest work you can imagine, it was the Australians! They nasscd through in the morning on their way up, having come from Alexia after a time in Egypt. They hadn't touched England, and seemed so pleased to find some Englishspeaking people. And somehow thry were so warm! I can't think of a word to describe them: but the bigness of them all (not only in size. I mean), and the simple friendliness was just lovely to me. Many were from Sydney and New South Wales. In a few days more will come. "I believe what you told me is true, that your country lias got a peculiar happiness and joy of its own. and 1 think of that when these men

:•• through with their big open out. look on things. There is so little fuss and worry about them —they seem to take everything as a part of what they have come to do—that I love them. T loved the Canadians, too. for one feels with both that there is a big something they have given up to come across here. They make one fee] quite small!

"Now we have the spring hero. and. the weather is glorious. Usually the day is fairly full of cutting bread anil butter and getting ready between arrivals of trains, but yesterday after tt'c had e'one the morning's trains we had two hour- for the woods, which lie .all round, ami quite (dose to the station."