Ah! Here it was, the stream of clean khaki cleaving the motley of the crowd. Here they came, the boys, tall, fit, and splendid, drilled to the minute; the pick and cream of the new belligerent country.... Here they came, spare and useful looking and ah, how faultless in kit and accoutrements, from straight-brimmed hats to spotlessly-polished boots. And as they swung past with the unison of a machine in which every part is perfect, there hove into sight, straggling, slouching towards them out of the station, a knot of British just back from the firing line. An officer walked along beside the men.
Over these there brooded the spectre of three years and more of War. Their eyes were heavy with lack of sleep as they lurched heavily along, blinking around them at London once again; they were dirty and loaded down with gear, they were strung about with mess-tins and water-bottles and boots and brown-paper parcels and battered shrapnel helmets. One or two of them had Hun helmets tied to their knapsacks. They wore greasy remnants of caps, disreputable goatskin coats. All over them was thickly caked the foul mud of the trenches.
What a contrast....
The mob of straggling scarecrows turned to give a friendly stare, a "Cheerio" to their smart American comrades as they swung past in their immaculate fours.
"See you in ten days!" shouted a Tommy.
Olwen Ross, up at the window, thrust out her little black head to watch the Americans.
"Oh, they are magnificent," she breathed excitedly. "Aren't you proud of them, Golden?"
"Am I proud of them!" laughed her friend.
But while the Welsh girl was all eyes for these new troops, the American girl's wide gaze turned upon the others with whom they must soon be standing shoulder to shoulder; the war-worn soldiers, muddy, tattered, scarred, exhausted, cheery still....
"They are magnificent, Olwen, I guess," said she.