OUT IN THE FRONT LINE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9783, 5 October 1917, Page 6

OUT IN THE FRONT LINE

MEN CALMLY WAIT FOR WHAT MAY COME. A soldier at the front sends the following account of his present mood and surroundings:—“Wo are,” li© writes, “in a small French village where the sensation I s c em to occasion, ©specially among the ladies and : the small urchins, whose curiosity really seems illimitable, Igads me to suspect that I must be the only Highlander that ever swung a debonnair© kilt down its winding streets. For the rest, the , place might pass for almost any tiny West Country village at Home. Its sun is » deal hotter, its sky, normally, a:little bluer, but otherwise the trees, the in-, numerable birds, the oxen, the run-' ning streams, the proud and much-, married gallant and Q-allicly vociferous chanticleers, one and all speak English, and serve only to" remind the exile in war-worn khaki of all that is, now most dear and most far, most cherished and most shadowy. Because le bon Dien alone knows if and whensome of us will ever set eyes on those happy English meadows and remembered city glimpses again. After this period of strenuous rest-training, is over, probably in about a month’s time w© shall be right in it—in the thick as fierce a melee as oven this war has yet seen. You will have news of us before many weeks are passed, and what the chances of this great adventure may be for your bumble servant in Forbes tartan, who dare say? I have been lucky so long now and have seen so many better men. than myself touch out for a landowner or a Blighty, that I am becoming rather to feel that , my turn must sooner or later come. If otherwise, I am to f stay out here- till the end of this War, which means if we are to fight it out at least another 18 months, or more probably two years,honestly I would as soon it were the quiet Order of the Wooden Cross. Butunfortunately beggars must not t be choosers. One is calmly prepared, therefore, to accept “what the Gods send, only devoutly trusting that, one, way or the other, the end will be soon. 'lf it is not now it is to come, if it is not to come it will be now,” said my Lord Hamlet. And those, I do assure you, are the real sentiments of every man out here whom I have met who is , neither a poltroon, nor a coward, and, there are fewer such than you might expect. _ Any man who has served six months in the trenches in the front line out here on the Western battlefields understands more profoundly than ever he could have done before the grim yet easeful meaning of that much-quoted line of Swinburne;— 'From too much love of living,’ etc.”