Where have you been?

I read quite often and frequently I will come across a passage that is very touching or has some relevance to my life. Recently I finished "Testament of Youth" by Vera Brittain (Virago, Longdon 1986 - Oringally published in 1933) which is her account of World War I and the effect it had upon her life. There were a few sections of text that struck me and I will post them here to share with you. The first concerns her first experience with American troops and I hope it is a warming, contrast to what I have posted previously...

"Only a day or two afterwards I was leaving quarters to go back to my ward, when I had to wait to let a large contingent of troops march past me along the main road that ran through our camp. They were swinging rapidly towards Camiers, and though the sight of soldiers marching was now too familiar to arouse curiosity, an unusual quality of bold vigour in their swift stride caused me to stare at them with puzzled interest.

They looked larger than ordinary mem; their tall, straight figures were in vivid contrast to the under-sized armies of pale recruits to which we had grown accustomed. At first I thought their spruce, clean uniforms were those of officers, yet obviously they could not be officers, for there were too many of them; they seemed, as it were, Tommies in heaven. Had yet another regiment been conjured out of our depleted Dominions? I woundered, watching them move with such rhythm, such dignity, such serene consciousness of selfrespect. But I knew the colonial troops so well, and these were different; they were assured where the Australians were aggressive, self-possessed where the New Zealanders where turbulent.

Then I heard and excited exclamation from a group of Sisters behind me.

"Look! Look! Here are the Americans!"

I pressed forward with the others to watch the United States physically entering the War, so god-like, so magnificient, so splendidly unimpaired in comparison with the tired, nerve-racked men of the British Army. So these were our delivers at last, marching up the road to Camiers in the spring sunshine! There seemed to be hundreds of them, and in the fearless swagger of their proud strength they looked a formidable balwark against the peril looming from Amiens.

Somehow the necessity of packing up in a hurry, the ignominious flight to the coast so long imagined seemed to move further away. An uncontrollable emotion seized me - as such emotions often seized us in those days of insufficient sleep; my eyeballs pricked, my throat ached, and a mist swam over the confident Americans going to the front. The coming of relief made me realize all at once how long and how intolerable had been the tension, and with the knowledge that we were not, after all, defeated, I found myself beginning to cry."

P420-421