“ALL LIFE IN AN HOUR.”

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 264, 24 October 1916, Page 3

“ALL LIFE IN AN HOUR.”

UNWRITTEN WONDERS OF THE WAR. TERROR AND BEAUTY. The following was written by a wounded Irish officer, recently returned to England, in reply to an English journal’s request for “real pictures of the fighting” “Let me tell you, sir, as one not wholly devoid of practical literary experience, that what you are looking for is simply not be had. The business of this Push—or of any other important phase of the war, for that matter —is too hig for letters. Bedad, it is too big for literature itself. You -won’t get it on paper. You can get little bits; yes, and much good they will do you. Almost any one bit written is calculated to mislead the innocent. Why ? Because, taken by itself, it is essentially untrue. It’s only true when seen as it is seen in reality: one chip id a mosaic. Looked at all on its lonesome, it is essentially false. “Why, if you’ll believe me, the colonel of the battalion next ours borrow'ed a handkerchief from me, to blow his blessed nose with, in the middle of one of the bloodiest little shows that ever was. ‘Got a handkerchief to spare,’ he said, in a casual sort of way. ‘I used mine tying up a feller’s arm. back there.’ I gave him my handkerchiefs, and he blew his nose comfortably, and shoved the rag in his breeches pocket. ‘That’s better,’ says he, and hurried on with the advance. He was with the rear company of his battalion, and the way he managed to get in and out among his men, cheering them on, was wonderful. “He was rather badly wounded later on, in hand-to-hand fighting with four Boches, who had cornered two of his men in their second line. But he’s all right, I think. Men were dropping all round us in that advance. It was an extraordinarily bloody business, and had been for 3'J hours and more before that. “HELL AND HEAVEN.”

“You can no more hope to get the Push described for folk who haven’t been out than you can hope to get the world described, or human life explained, on a postcard. The pen may be ever so mighty, but, believe me, it has its limitations. “What’s the Push like ? It’s like everything that ever was. as well. It’s all the struggles of life crowded into an hour; it’s an assertion of the bedrock decency and goodness oi our people; and I wouldn’t have missed it lor all the gold in London town. I don’t want to be killed ; not a little bit. But, bless you, one simply can’t be bothered giving it a thought. The killing of odd individuals such as ine is so tiny a matter. My God, it’s the future oi humanity ; countless millions : all the laughing little kiddies, and the slim straight young girls, and the sweet women, and the men that are to come. It’s all humanity we’re fighting for, whether life’s to be clean and decent, free, and worth having —or a Boche nightmare. You can’t describe it, but I wouldn’t like to be out of it for long. It’s Hell and Heaven, and the Devil and the World; and, thank goodness, we’re cn the side of the xangels—decency, not material gain—and we’re going to win. POINTS OF VIEW.

“Suppose I set out to depict something of the shapeless, grisly horror of it all. God knows there’s enough of ’em. What’s the best effect I’ll produce, especially on anyone who’s never been out there? An effect of shapeless, confused, purposeless horror. Well, is the Push no more than that? You bet it is. Why, looked at from one point of view, it is positively beautiful. From the platoon standpoint it may be a colossal lark or a tangled horror ; whilst, from the High Staff standpoint, the main im-l pression may well be one of mathe-1 matical nicety, perfectly dovetailed j detail and smooth working precision To give you an instance: “The other afternoon I came mighty near puking, in a warren of Boche trenches we took outside Longueval. Nothing much. We’ve all seen worse things. A little heap of four dead Boches. They were decently buried an hour later. I was the first of our people to see this particular shambles. You know how careful our chaps are, with their kindly sense of decency. Their first thought is to cover a dead Boches face —give him some decent dignity, even if they’re not able at the moment to give him decent burial. English, Irish, Scots, Canadian, Australian, South African —all the British troops are like that Well, they hadn’t had time to clean up here, and these particular Boches had been done up pretty nasty, as they say. Some of our heavy stuff must have landed right among ’em. They -were in the mouth of a dugout. AN INTERRUPTED TEA-PARTY. “Right. Two minutes later I came upon as homely a little picture as you’d find in the neighbourhood of any peaceful Irish or English village : three of our lads crouching over an old brazier, on which they were making afternoon tea, if you please, frying a scrap of bacon and boiling the water for tea at the same time. I took it in, and passed on pondering the queerness of the whole business. I wasn’t more than 60 or 70 paces away, when three Bosche shells arrived, like a postman’s knock, somewhere close behind. Just three, and no more: one of the flukes of the day. “Something made me turn back and go to take another look at the tea-party. One of its members had been instantaneously killed; his head smashed to pulp. Another had been terribly mauled, and ■was already being attended to by a couple of stretcher-bearers who had been resting in a dug-out within sight of the party, and themselves had been covered with earth and dust from the shells. L lent a hand, and they very soon had the poor chap on his ■way down to the dressing station. But I feel sure one won’t ever see him again. You know that hopeless yellow pallor. “I was back that w’ay within a quarter of an hour, and there was , of ’s own section, you know, rolling a cigarette in a bit of newspaper, having just finished the bacon. His half-filled canteen of tea was alongside the brazier, which lay now on its side ; upset, no doubt, when the shells came; indeed, it was half-buried. But told me the bacon had been saved, and, in some queer way. the tea. So he had had ’s whack, and ’s, as well as his own ; and as he rolled his cigarette in the scrap of a Sunday newspaper he w’as humming ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning.’ ”