THE DEATH OF A CHUM.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15488, 15 January 1916, Page 3

THE DEATH OF A CHUM.

Tt is late and I anr very sad. was' killed , yc.sterdfiy, ■ almost bv my side. It is a knock to' lose one's very best friend. ■ If-1 were a ■woman I should cry. ' I almost wish I could. Ho was such a fine chap, so cheery and such a good soldier. And only twenty-sis! The men adored him. It seems such a hopeless waste of good materia!. I oughtn't to say that, I suppose. From the military point of view the individual can't be considered. To fight lor one's country and to die for it. if needs be, is only one's duly as well as °uc s piivilegc. Scores of good men as worthy and splendid as have been taken. Rut it's the selfish personal' loss that' 3 cutting (deep into me to-night. Poor Rupert Brooke put into words what -we inarticulate ones can only echo. They should be carved i' l stono rnd nut up in Westminster Abbey, o/ better still ir. Belgium on a monument to commemorate the honoured dead —immortal verse in praise of the immortals, written "by one who is already counted amongst them.

If I should d;« thin'? only this of me: That there's eonio corner of a foreign field That is f:r cv« r England. ... Then come the words 1 forget, aud then : A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,Gave once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body cf Englnnd'3. breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. We buried this evening. "Wheu I turned away with a heart of lead, I could almost hear his' boyish voice reiterating the words that always came most readily to his lips —"Buck up, old chap! It's all in the day's work." T can't realise that he is really dead. My mind keeps reverting to the days of our first meeting. It'.i getting on for twenty ycars> ago, ui;i it seems only yesterday that we were little chaos of eight and ten and very sore-hearted at. leaving home for the first time. Wo slept -in the same dormitory, and smothered our grief under the bedclothes, but when, like ■whales, we had to come to the surface to breathe, we heard each other's sobs. We chummed up that night. Do you remember his coming to stay with us the first holidays and how shy he was when you kissed him? He thought you 'onked too young! Then Wellington aaid Sandhurst strengthened the bond between us. A few years of soldiering and cow—finish! Little soul, it's all so sad. I must write- to girl (there was' one)There's so little I can say. "I loved him too." can't comfort her. I know I needn't apologise for letting myself go once in a way. You'll understand. There's a gloom over us all. Dear old is well dug into liis last trench to-night. This time yesterday we were curled up in our blankets having a final pipe Snd watching the stars. Be is—l mean was, or is it still f 'is"? —such an imaginative being, full of speculations about the infinite and the ultimate meaning of things—the giant query. Well, he knows more than I do now.—"Nash's Magazine."