SCRAPPED

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16272, 24 July 1918, Page 10

SCRAPPED

It iB but a few weeks since I did my! final "About turn" I in tile Army—a , movement that left three years of mili- • tary service behind me and set before . me the task of marching, as fast as a limp and an enfeebled constitution would allow, into civil life. i No longer must I trudge. through a j weary desolation of mud, slimy and treacherous; no longer need I dodge ' from shell-hole to shell-hole as the "whizz-bangs'' and "5.9'5" scream and crash around or as the bullets and splinters hiss in the air and thud and j splutter as they bury themselves in the j mud. I My nights that 1 so often spent tn wearied wakefulness in an atmosphere putrid with poison gas now pass m sleep in a safe, comfortable bed, with the crowning gjories of white sheets and a clean body. And dawn—weu, I have almost forgotten —I shall never wholly forget, of course—the feelings, sights, and sound of it. i But—there is a feeling of dissatisfaction. The war goes on and lam out of it. I have fallen out on the line of march, while the remnant of those who crossed to Franco with me are still trudging the hard road. Today I am resting; but how I shall envy that remnant when the war is over—when they have seen it through 1 I I miss the abandon of the soldier's | ' life. In the Army one lives for the day—for the moment. One does things with a laugh and a jest that cannot be done, without endless explanations, by the average civilian. Now I mu-:t remember that the spirit of camaraderie that animates the boys in khaki is restrained and confined by the conventions of civil life. I must not hail a passing pedestrian with a "Ho.v goes it, chum?'' and then perhaps enter with him into intimate details of lis or my personal experiences and iife. "Blighty,'' too, is not the "Blighty ' of our dreams. Those dreams of home wero of tho home that was before we enlisted. But life at home has changed'. Restrictions are everywhere, and ono must learn an appalling list of "dont's" before venturing to do. There is a wet blanket over everything. All eyes and ears are strained for "ne vs of battle." Friends have gone; and ono misses them. The daily bulletins of the war tell little to the average civilian, but to the soldier turned civilian every sentence, every phrase, is pregnant with memory-laden meaning, and the perils and sufferings of one's pals and relatives are realised as others cannot realise them. It is good to be free from the actual dangers and hardships of battle; but a discharge from the Armv is not a nassago to the Promised Land.—(By F. Nicul in London "Daily Express."')