“HAVE THEY TURNED US DOWN?”

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9614, 21 March 1917, Page 7

“HAVE THEY TURNED US DOWN?”

THE CALL FROM THE TRENCHES. Corporal Redman, writing to his father, Sergeant Redman, police station, Yamha, Clarence river, from France, on December 28th, says: — : “I have had no chance to write to you for a long time, as we' have been up in the first line of trenches for six weeks without a spell, up to our thighs in mud and water. The weather here now is bitterly cold, and all the lads have bad feet from standing up to their thighs in water in a trench for 48 hours at a time. If some of the chaps in Australia saw the way boys not half their age stick it here like bricks, they would be ashamed of themselves—that is, if there is any shame in them. What we see in the papers lately makes us ask ourselves the question, Have the people in Australia turned us down? If they saw lads, who should be at home with their mothers, standing in a wet trench, crying with the pain of their swollen and aching feet, they would begin to think, and tlie whole reason of it is that we can’t got enough rest out of the trenches. Sly feet are just getting back to normal again after being swollen up for about six weeks, but the way they ache at night keeps me awake. We are all anxiously waiting for the spring to come—that is. if it is our luck to see it out till then—for I think in the spring there will be a big move up that will hasten the end. I had four months in the hospitals in England, three weeks out, then was ordered straight back into the trenches again. A lot more besides me have had to return before they arc fit for the work, hut there is nothing else for it. If we can’t get help, then we must stick it to the last.”