LETTERS FROM THE FRONT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11360, 12 April 1915, Page 1

LETTERS FROM THE FRONT.

AX EERIE NIGHT. A member of the French Foreign Legion writes:--I'ossibly it, wa.s not fair to niako the men go on sentrv work the first night in the trenches," after n. long march and a game that was completely new to them': but still, there were the lives of The others to protect, and—an — " .Mais e'est la guerre, monsieur, quo vculea-vo-us?" It was also unwise not to tell the men that, there were dead lying about; but wo were greenhorns, and it wa& possibly discretion. "Who knows? Anyway, that we " bletis " were put on the, job the first night was, our own fault, because we. had professed great " bravouro "' during the daytime when a, tree trunk looks a tree trunk and not a blurry goblin. As to our '' bravo tire/ 5 I was a scrap dubious. I remember claiming with magnanimous gestures that he was good tor a bayonet charge and simply defied bullets: but a moment later, when one of our 7o millimetre cannons belched forth 150 yards behind him, ho gavo a mighty big jump iind got under cover like a rabbit. "Well, that night we were tire yards apart, each behind a gun hole. ' with orders nob to fire but to warn the sergeants in c..r.s& of alajm. It. was a fair night, hut, the moon had a nasty habit of throwing twisty shadows. .An altogether uncertain light. One could just'see the. Germaoi lines, which were quite close, and horrible shapes lurked in that' depth of darkness.

It must- not be forgotten thai trench-1 es advance trnvard die enemy zigzag fashion, while the actual trendies m<e> formed as corrugated paper viewed edgewise. Even the front line, parallel to that of tie enemy's, is dug this way. the idea being to arrest the ravages or a shell tliat falls in the trench itself. We were thus stationed one in each bend of the line, in easy earshot, but completely out of sight of each other. On occupying the post, provided, one'* work is done conscientiously, with a sharp eye and an alert ear, one always feels that something is going to happen. It is far too quiet" for a- battlefield, ono reflects. The Germans musV be creeping up. After straining the eyes in the darkness for a. few minutes the .shadows begin to dance, the props, to which the barbed wires are fixed a few yards before you assume human forms, while the uncollected bundles of hoy become corpses or crouching "Bodies," and to the right a suspicious beetroot patch arrests the eye with a jerk. The wet black nights are the •'•'nervy" nights. Impossible to see a yam before one. the least sound to the high-strung nerves suggests a horde of Germans creeping up on their elbows and knees armed to the teeth and ready to leap up to strangle you.

The German practice is to pot at us at clcso intervals day and night, especially the latter, and suddenly little at tho far end, who was quite alone, .started yelling out: "Oh, sergeant, sergeant! I can see a lot of Germans walking about with electric flash lamps!—-they're coming our way!'' The sergeant ran up and looked over his gunhole. ''Can't see anything,' he exclaims after a while. " Yes. look look_ there—all. those little moving lights,' 1 goes .on . "Now, don't be silly; can't you see they are the fire from the rifles. Don't get excited," and with this he shuffles off to bed again. For some long while—perhaps fifteen minutes—no alarm is given. The sentinels stare over tho gunholes into the grey indistinct void. Our orders are to call " Halte la, qui viver" and if no reply to fire. Suddenly I hear the next sentinel " quiviving"'" in a shaky voice the beetroot patch to my right. But the wind only nods the leaves; so it is promptly ordered to " Halte la—" No response. Five minutes later little —— horrifies (he others by declaring that lie had just seen a Prussian looking through his gunhole. The feet become unbearably cold and numb, and one tries to thaw the fingers by breathing on them. One •looks at the watch; the hands do not scorn to have moved; still another long hour. Oue thinks with what .toy you will wake the next man to take your place. Possibly the poor fellow is unable to sleep, knowing that his rest is to be- broken. Then you will walk over the other sleepers with an men of mud clogged round each of your boots, dirtying their blankets and disturbing their slumber as you creep to your place* among thera. A stealthy shadow draws beside yon and touches yc-ur arm. " Look out there,''" it whispers hi an eerie voice, " those two bundles of hay are moving forward. I can hear someone breathing behind them." Ono recalls the advancing wood dodge- in "Macbeth,'' and tho hair stands on end. Yes, there is certainly .something moving there: but beioro you have further time, to reflect your companion lets fire. There follows a hideous yell, tins straw quivers, and something black hisses past you. The poor old sergeant's cat has had its tail amputated by -a ballet! And so for a further hour the cold night creeps ou. Then it is yourself who sees a form lying a few yards away. A crouching .man without s shadow of a doubt. But no, it must be hallucination. You wait five minutes and look in a differentdirection. On turning round the eyes catch, it at once. It is, stall there—lying very close to the earth and hiding its head- You compare notes with the next sentinel, and lie agrees. He has just seen it himself. A volley of balls'are discharged, but, the form does not budge. More assured, one. continues the

vigil until at length relieved, and the terrors of the night, for you, at least, are over. Nest morning you look over

the trench to verify or explsiu the mysteries of the yore. The horrible, low-lying shadow wo shot at is still there,—tile corpse of a soldier .left unburied. Lei us hope wo did not hit him. WELL seasoned pig-eons. A m<unb**r of the Loudon Rille Brigade writes:—

We have just fiukhed. three daysiu ; the reserve, when wo had. a. very nice time.. Nine of us wore put into an old farmhouse, rather the. worse for a few shells as a garrison. Wo had. three j'oonis on the "' groimd floor/' one as a living room and the other two as bed and armoury, etc. Tti the living room wc bad ;i, huge log rtrc going iu an open fireplace for" the whole time, and, of eouse. we cooked .ill our own grub. '.Hound the lire we built up a huge tetter of .sandbag*. Wc. fed very woll the whole time. ', Fried eggs; and bacon, toast, etc., for i brekker"; soup, aa-usagu or other meat, i mashed 'potatoes, rice and stewed tigs. I and fruit, for dinner; buttered' toast, I jam aiid cakes for tea.; and for supper we usuallv hiire Welsh rarebit and hot

rum punch, or cocoa. It seems scarcely credible, but we wore only oOOyds behind the trenches. One day we noticed some pigeons feeding iu a. maize held. and. knowing that, no one was allowed to keep tliem. I but ikiakiug more of the flareur of

pigeon pie, wo decided to try and catch some. We could not up a. decent snare, and we arc not .allowed to sliooW any game, so wo hit upon tho brilliant idea. 01 soaking some bread and corn in ram and putting it out where the pigeons name to I'eod. We carefully watched them, feeding round this stuff, and when, we thought that they had had enough of tho bait to prevent thorn escaping, we rushed' up, but, lo and behold! they simply flow away as calmly a« yon like, and 1 swear they must. have, had enough rum to make two good old topers drunk.

A CONVERSATION IN LATIN. A lieutenant in the Indian Army writes :- 1 went to occupy a trench from which tho Germans had lately been evicted. It was quite dark, and on entering tlie trench at the head of my party I heard someone talking in a loiv voice. I crept forward a-s quietly as 1 could, and' saw what I imagined must be a doctor supporting tho head of a wounded man. I called upon him to surander, and he held up a crucifix towards mo, so 1 knew he mu»t be a, priest. The priest was giving absolution to a dying Bavarian who expired a few minutes later. I went up to the priest, who. however, could not understand English or French. I know very little German; only a few words, in fact, so we fell back on Latin, in which tongue we held a short and very halting conversation. As far as I could make out, he said that the Germans were suffering much from sickness, and he disliked the Prussians most cordially. Eventually I allowed him to return to the German trenches, which I expect ana hope tha.t he reached in safety. My men expostulated afterwards at my letting him go, as they thought it most important to kill the German " Padre Dog." The courage of the German priest in remaining to give absolution to his dying countrymen surpasses any tiling I have heard myself in the course of the present war. as he must have known that ho would fall into the hands, not of British soldiers, who might possibly have respected his calling, but into those of men who must have been represented to him as barbarous savages. *•* AN ENGLISH TOMMY'S WORD. A Private of the Grenadier Guards writes:— »v touching incident occurred in front of our trench. A German officer had been wounded in a charge and left in front of our trench. He was crawling, or trying to crawl s to our trench, but could not manage- it. One of our stretcher bearers got up out of our trench and asked the Germans if they would shoot him if he went and pull«s the German in. but they made bo answer.

So our chaps shonted across and told them to fetch him ami they would not shoot, so two Germans came over tho trench and brought him in. The Germans said. " Thank you. English," and our fellows gavo the Germans a cheer, which was taken up by the Germans. The incident shows how a British ''Tommy''* will not take the word of a.German but that a German knows that if an Englishman gives his word he will stick to it. We hare church service one© a week. Every man attends, as his first thoughts are of home and God when he goes mto the trenches. ■•v THE IMPERTURBABLE ENGLISH. An officer writes:— IN THE FIELD. Well, I. drank my week's loa.ve to the dregs, and returned with the feeling that I had really done my bit-—a feeliug I irish I could have come home with. My stay brought home to me a main characteristic of the Englishman.

I remember reading in the memoirs of xi young A.D.C. to the Duke of Wellington a passage in which he related that as he grew bored with the monotony of incessant fighting at Waterloo he left the battle for a short holiday. I always thought that the statement was meant rather to amuse than to convey the truth. Hut now that I have' seen Englishmen playing football in a field where a battery was in action, have watched them chase a hare into the firing line a few hours after they had' been relieved from the trenches, and have actually crossed the seas at the Government's expense for a week's holiday while the greatest war in history is in progress, I have no right to bo amazed %?r amused at anything. xuere we are fighting out the struggle of our existence and every week we allow hundreds of men performing vital duties to go home for a holiday. They are in the trenches one night and homo the next morning. They are sleeping at the Berkeley one night and in a dugout the next. You would think that this rapid change of surroundings would lead to some excitement, would cause some feeling, such joy at seeing parents or wives for the first time since the outbreak of war, to get the upper hand even of the passive Englishmen, But from tho time we got in the special train at to the time we shook the hands of those who met us at Victoria, only ona man let himself go so far as to whistle. There was more excitement ns we came back in the boat. Everyone was looking out for submarines, and I am sura experienced disappointment when wo arrived at Boulogne and realised that we had not been torpedoed. And yet it would be incorrect to say that the Englishman does not realise the propriety or the seriousness of thiugs. He would leave a ship in a storm to have a swim, but you cannot imagine him leaving a> .same of football to have a ta!k with a friend. He has throughout this war regarded the most terrible devices of the enemy with amusement or careless interest and it is only his game of football behind the trenches that really mailers; it is only when watching it that he is really enthusiastic, and bo will say things about the referee which, he never felt about the most kultured (terman. About his great work bo goes so carelessly that when you look back upon bis achievements they seem inevitable. With these qualities we cannot- help winning one battle, and that will have to be tin last.