TEST OF MEN.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 14145, 24 July 1916, Page 2

TEST OF MEN.

.NERVE STRAIN OF WAR

An interesting letter from a soldier writing home is quoted in the London "Times." He says :— "Here lam .still alive; that's the surprise. That month of. March (and the shells are, as f write, 'bursting close enough to shake the ground and give one, palpitation) was one long- drapen-up escape; just enough interval "between th^-excitements to-.keep one fit enough to. stick it. For a few days everything | was very "dreamy and topsy-turvy—'a bomtfanlment.' Everything- ' but your own life was a misty detail of the past, and I <mly sorae clothing, some souvenirs, some equipment, etc. I want to forget those days and nights; niy hands often bloody, and I saw many a man killed, or watched him die.. It seems now a nightmare. Several comrades of mine are laid up with shell shock and shattered nerves; war lovers should see some of these cases when they are here, and then you see some of the horror, the awful madness and torture of war's worst. I don't wonder at the French infantry being so fierce in their counter-attacks; a bombardment makes a mad animal of you (if you are lucky enough to be alive) like

a child seeing bogeys and frightened to. the point of .insanity'; . "It's awfully-,testing toWjright up to death tim© after time. Th&fconcusBioii- is to Mil you -if yon arc close enough. H.E. is terrible stiiff. when it explodes; one's inside gjets an awful lift, After a series of such strains 'one jumps at the crack of a rifle and the ping-pong of a "bullet, and bombs are then as loud as shells. Yes. 'tis the afterwards, too. You don't look much different, I suppose, but if you have a few months of such liveliness— and we have had a fair all-round experience—one's nerves are far different from what they were in Angleterro. "One good thing is. I have (I now kepw) quite strong nerves, a^id was able to do as much as wlas possible, my duty. Of course, you know I am a stretcher-bearer now.

"A lob of now faces in the. battalion now—a big draft joias us, and the old gets fewer as time goes on. T.t makes one feel a bit sad Ifand one wonders who's the next), and one thinks of the old chums of camp who have goneMost of ■ the wounded, who get fit again do not *join. this battalion, you see, and so with officers and men the battalion changes, and the originals kind of cling: to one another as very old pals."