Those clean-shaven, sun-tanned, dust-covered men, who had come out of
the hell of the Dardanelles and the burning drought of Egyptian sands,
looked wonderfully fresh in France. Youth, keen as steel, with a flash
in the eyes, with an utter carelessness of any peril ahead, came
riding down the street.
They were glad to be there. Everything was new and good to them
(though so old and stale to many of us), and after their adventures in
the East they found it splendid to be in a civilized country, with
water in the sky and in the fields, with green trees about them, and
flowers in the grass, and white people who were friendly.
When they came up in the train from Marseilles they were all at the
windows, drinking in the look of the French landscape, and one of
their officers told me that again and again he heard the same words
spoken by those lads of his.
"It's a good country to fight for . . . It's like being home again."
At first they felt chilly in France, for the weather had been bad for
them during the first weeks in April, when the wind had blown cold and
rain-clouds had broken into sharp squalls.
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