HIS LAST MESSAGE.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2649, 24 November 1919, Page 7

HIS LAST MESSAGE.

HOW TRAGIC LETTERS REACHED THE HOMELAND. I was warned for a bombing-raid that was likely to prove a forlornhope. Therefore, I wrote a certain letter, putting on the envelope, "To be forwarded in the event of my death," and handed it to a chum to take care of —he was not going on the raid. "I understand," he said. That letter did not have to be sent, for I was unhit. We were waiting near a dump. An officer of another regiment came up, and said :

"There's a poor laddie of your regiment lying out on the ridge yonder. I thought you might like to know."

T followed his guidance, and found the body. I felt in the breast pocket and found an envelope. It was a fearsome task, but when I read in the brilliant moonlight the words, "In the event of death kindly forward," I was glad I had found courage to do it. Later two comrades were killed, and for several days I moved about a battlefield carrying those three precious letters, and in danger of ,going West myself. I did not worry about the safety of the letters. I knew that if I "stopped it" others would take and carry them to the loved ones in Blighty. Some weeks later I was wounded, and came home. For four months a comrade carried a packet of old letters, which I had left in my pack when I discarded it on the battlefield. When he at last achieved leave he brought ihem to me in England. "I knew they were personal, old chap, and I wouldn't trust 'em to the post," he said. Those letters were doubly precious to me after that. I wonder if those at home who received the personal treasures and letters of their dead know that great courtesy of the British soldier ? How men risk their lives and crawl .into No Man's Land so that a dead pal's wife or mother —it is to his womenfolk that the soldier usually addresses that sacred letter —shall have the very last message he ever wrote. Through what infernos of shelling they carry these letters ! How they will add to their overburdened kit some token that Bill or George, would like his missus to have, and how they carry such a treasure, and will not part with it until they can find a certain messenger to take it to the bereaved woman !

No ; there is no glory in war, but there is love.