REALITIES OF WAR

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 123, 20 November 1929, Page 13

REALITIES OF WAR

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—JSlay I request a little space in reference to an item of news published in !,,?n ' Evenin S Vost" of ISth November, 1929, headed "Realities of War"? During the years immediately following the war there was a tendency amongst dramatists, writers of fiction, and motion picture producers to feature the more lurid scenes of battle with acts of heroism of the melodramatic type, and to depict the hero as a modern Galahad and Hereward combined. On the whole the public ■vyere not gulled altogether by such versions of the modern-world epic, whilst the soldier himself smiled with good-na-tured contempt upon the picture of himself wearing a -"halo" instead of a hat, or employing his bayonet for tossing numbers of the enemy over his shoulder instead of for. the more humdrum purpose ot a tin-opener. Recently, however, the scene has elian"ed somewhat. Although the previous versions were of little merit, at least they could be tolerated. The new version however, very definitely calls upon every soldier who took part in the war to give the he flatly to the insidious attempt to "lily the character and disparage the ideals of the vast majority of those men who fought, of many who died, and of the bigger majority who lived on after the dread experience and adjusted themselves like true men to the times of peace a t T aII( wdli they adapte<l themselves to the demands ot war service I'he drama "Journey's End," which' has lijid such a successful run in England and the Continent, and is now in oul- own midst, must leave a peculiar taste in the mouth of every soldier. Its saving grace is the fact that.it reminds people of the ghasthness of war, its waste, its sacrifice, and its inevitable tragedy. Such facts are likely to be lost sight of as the scenes of war pale into • the past, and people forget just what men had to endure. But the impression that the drama gives of war li£e and character is-as depressing and sordid as it is unrepresentative. In a dug-out party of five officers the drama presents a coward with a mean nature and filthy mind; an overbearing bully, so self-centred that he overlooks the countless thousands and thinks he is the only one who has to forget the war and adopts the weak-minded expedient ot whisky; a fleshy, common sort of a chap, with his mind mainly centred on food; a boy straight from an English Public School, with a blissful ignorance of what war meant—and this in 1918 after four years of war; and just one real character with some strength—clean, balanced, and getting on with the job in a decent,. unaffected and genuine manner. War—as usually depicted, through, the medium of the officer's mess; war—grotesque as in past pen-efforts; but war, this time illuminated by a cruel light picking out the bad patches, focusing on the rare, the grotesque and unusual, and featuring them as ."fair average quality"— as. the "Unknown Soldier" of 1914-191 S. /First came "All Quiet on the Western Front," the morbid pen-picture of a realist. Now we have "Journey's End," and cable news reports "Good-bye to All," a. book by Robert Graves, with "many anecdotes unquotable in a newspaper, emphasising the slow, horrible, physical, and mental deterioration c*f men of all ranks," and "men preferring suicide to the continued fighting." As one who was actually in the thick of it on the Western Front, I would like to take this opportunity of giving my version as follows:—

(1) My own experience does not embrace one instance of a soldier drinking himself, constantly and consistently into a state of "Dutch courage" because he lacked the moral stamina to stand up to the job. (2) Most of the war was seen outside the officers' mess, the time-honoured centre of war life according to novels and dramas. (3) I know of no instance o£ a man preferring suicide to the continued fighting. (4) In place of a horrible deterioration in men, there was a broadening of their outlook on life, a deepening of their understanding, and the kindling of that gentle warmth of good comradeship, which after all is the essence of life, and the central teaching of the New Testament. (5) I take as an insult to myself and my old companions any implication that we were "kidded" into the war. We were up against hard facts and utark reality, which shattered many an illusion, and to a certain extent changed history into fiction for us. We fully realised ihat we could not believe what the newspapers printed, nor what the authorities allowed to be published relative to the war. But we never wavered from our appreciation of the central truth of the war and our own individual part and our nation's part in it. We always knew why we were there, and though we hated it we knew it was necessary. '

May I say in conclusion, that the soldier could take a drink, enjoy it, and not let it take him; that he was intensely human and considerate to his fellows, and bullies were few; that a coward was rare, though "wind-up" was common to most; that he was frequently "fed-up," but of his own volition "stuck" to it; and he never forgot the reason he was there, namely, to do his bit to kill, Germany's lust for world power, and smash the menace of militarism.—l am, etc., A.I.F.