And now he is at the front."
Quite unexpectedly round a turn in the road we came on a great line of
Canadian transports--American-built lorries with khaki canvas tops.
Canadians were driving them, Canadians were guarding them. It gave me
a homesick thrill at once to see these other Americans, of types so
familiar to me, there in Northern France.
Their faces were eager as they pushed ahead. Some of the tent-shaped
wooden buildings were to be temporary barracks for them. In one place
the transports had stopped and the men were cooking a meal beside the
road. Some one had brought a newspaper and a crowd of men had gathered
round it. I wondered if it was an American paper. I would like to have
stood on the running board of the machine, as we went past, and called
out that I, too, was an American, and God bless them!
But I fancy the young officer with me would have been greatly
disconcerted at such an action. The English are not given to such
demonstrations. But the Canadians would have understood, I know.
Since that time the reports have brought great news of these Canadian
troops, of their courage, of the loss of almost all their officers in
the fighting at Neuve Chapelle. But that sunny morning, when I saw
them in the north of France, they were untouched by battle or sudden
death.
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