Open AccessFrance and the Somme Battle - Delville Wood
Landing in France to most of us was a thrilling adventure; to myself, barely out of my teens, everything was excitingly new and of great interest. The whole atmosphere was so different from Egypt and more'so from England and home. We had plenty of time around the dock area waiting whilst our effects were being unloaded, checked and assembled. The glimpses of the many civilians passing by, so different in dress and behaviour from what we were accustomed to was intriguing and in many cases intensely amusing; the happy-go-lucky attitude to the ordinary proprieties of life as we knew them were blissfully absent. Being only Tommies and the lowest of the low in the eyes of the world, we had a down-to-earth view of life around us.