THE WAR

Feilding Star, Volume XI, Issue 2566, 10 February 1915, Page 4

THE WAR

IN THE TRENCHES

AN AUCKLANDER'S EXPERIENCES.

Letters from Lieut. J. Walker to his parents, Mr and Mrs H. C. H. Walker, of Remuera, tell a rare tale: "I have just time to drop you a line before we go into the trenches. We came hack from our old one after 32 days in them, and we have three dnys' rest, so that we are now nice and clean again. Officers, N.C.O.'s, and men are bathed, in clean clothes, and all as fit as iiddles. The ground is frozen six inches deep, and the snow covers everything to a depth of about two inches. Yet I'm as fit, as fat, and well as I can be, and I'm even beginning to get a colour. I've been commanding my company now for over a month." -' Lieut. Walker again writes: "I haven't deserted. I'm not even wounded. All officers who have been out all the time have ben given ten days' leave to England, two being away at a time. I'm second senior of that lot, so here I am. *1 left, the trenches about midnight on the night of December 1, got a horse, rode to divisional headquarters, got in a London motor-bus, motored from Nieppe, near Arinentin, to Boulogne, got there at 2 a.m. on the 2nd, caught the packet at' 3 a.m., crossed safely, and arrived here (England) at 8 p.m. —that is, from the trenches to peace and- perfect cleanliness in less than 24- hours." i On December 10 Lieut. Walker wrote: "I'm doing my share of the j work in the western corner of Belgium. Although I've had, like all the others, a pretty strenuous time, yet-the harder it is the more I thrive. I have not felt sick or sorry since the war began. It would take hours to tell you what 1 have been through. I'm now in charge of a company of 200 men, and have 350 yards of : trenches to hold at any cost. There are hundreds o fother s at the same job, and as long as I can hang on to mine, outside news does not matter much. I only know that Army Headquarters Staff profess to be entirely satisfied with the situation, and say it is only a question of time before the Germans throw in." Under date December 14, Lieut. -Walker wrote: "The men have just come back from trenches, and have I had air awful time. They had to 'evacuate parts'of the trenches, as they were full of water, and the remaining trenches had six inches to a foot of water in them. It rained ali most incessantly. But the wonderful thing is that the men are all well and fit, and very few have colds. They are very cheery about it all." "The beggars chased us to Paris, and we chased them back to Berlin" is how a trooper in the sth Lancers (the Dandy Fifty) curtly describes in a letter to a relative in Dunedin the thrilling experiences of'the 3rd Army Corps in the' British retreat from Mons and the splendid counter-stroke that saved Paris and drove the Germans back to burrow in Belgium. The trooper in question took part in -the fiercest battles during tho first three months of the war. and came through the. nerve-racking ordeal with nothing worse than a splintered heel (from shrapnel) and exhausted nerves. His nearest approach to death was when a clumsy comrade banged a bivllet through the trooper's tunic. He appears to have been happiest when engaged upon cavalry work, but after the Germans had been shoved backward most of the. cavalry divisions became infantry, and had to "dig themselves in." He makes no secret of his aversion to "fighting in holes like ferrets and rats," and confesses that he was sorry to leave a Scottish hospital, where he secured a few weeks' rest. During the hottest spell of the prolonged clash on the Aisno he had not managed to gel. his boots off for ten weeks. He makes light of his condition, but comments, like a soldier, on the horrors of frostbite and vermin-bite. ...