A Great English War Book.

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17804, 31 August 1929, Page 14 (Supplement)

A Great English War Book.

On the .thirteenth anniversary of the storming of Ovillers by the British in the Battle of the Somme, Mr Charles Edmonds’s fine account of his experiences as a young officer, “ A Suba:tern’s War,” made its appearance.

It will take very high rank among war books, because every line in it breathes truth, and it is not mere propaganda cooked up with a very large seasoning of imagination. Particularly does it stand out in comparison with the second-rate German memoirs which have been so ridiculously overboomed by uncritical reviewers; and for that reason it ought to be read by every British man and woman.

In that appalling land of death which was the Somme battlefield one feature recognisable for miles—the Butte de Warlencourt—stood out as the tomb of thousands. “ That ghastly hill, never free -from the smoke of bursting shells, became fabulous. It loomed up unexpectedly, peering into the trenches where you thought yourself safe; it haunted your dreams. Twenty-four hours in the trenches before it finished a man off.”

The author did not serve in one of the most famous divisions, but he took part in two of the most terrible battles ever fought by man—the First Somme and the Third Battle of Ypres. Writing immediately after the war, he thus records his first sensations in battle:

Now It stands silent with the great crosses of the war monuments rising above its multitudes of silent graves where once the battle raged so furiously.

An emptiness almost like a physical pain tormented my bow'els; the naked fear, basest of human emotions, fighting its way up from the subconscious and finding a

On one fact the author is emphatic: The Somme battle raised the morale of the British Army. Although we did not win a decisive victory, there was what matters most, a definite and growing sense of superiority over the enemy man to man. It was ten thousand pities that the fruit of this struggle was largely thrown away in the frightful struggle in the mud at Passchendaele. The photograph of “ Stretcher bearers in the Salient ” reproduced in this book gives some idea of what that mud meant. This is the author's aecounL of it: “There are no words in English for the omnipresent wetness, the sliminess, the stickiness of the mud. the gouts that you found clogging your fingers and wiped off accidentally in your hair when you adjusted your helmet, the smears of it that appeared on your clean message forms and your mess tin, the saturation of your clothes with its semi-solid filthmess, the smell of it, and the taste of it

voice in that part of my mind which reasoned and realised . . ’. Always the struggle within, fought behind the dark curtains which screen the hidden springs of conduct, was more real than the physical struggle without, and the practical details of life passed by like an illusion.

The Best Men. Every soldier will agree that this Is > the reality. The best man is he who 'f is afraid but can yet overcome fear. I always preferred, says the I author, the steadiness of the man who I was afraid and yet carried on, to the I lack of perspicacity that was the I secret of most “ brave ” men’s flrm- ) ness.

Ex-Soldier’s View of War.

Men Who Feared and Fought

On ... .

Initiated

In this miserable swamp, which at times swallowed up unwary men, day after day the troops had to live and fight, and the author’s battalion sustained losses totalling about 50 per cent, of the strength engaged without collapsing. Honour to the men who endured such things and did not lose heart!

In a final essay, one of the best things in our lahguage on the subject, Mr Edmonds states' the ex-soldier’s view of war. “ The deeper a spiritual experience goes the more difficult It is to communicate its meaning to another person . . . Lovers or religious mystics feel for one another. They have an inner life in common. In the same way, though in a lesser degree, soldiers who have fought side by side are conscious of being initiated.” He protests strongly against the weakling’s view—“ the cry of a hurt child against the harshness of the world. There was never (he says finely) in the British armies and navies a suggestion of that mutinous defaitisme which ruined Russia, Germany, and Austria, which threatened Italy and France. As to the rights and wrongs of the struggle, the attitude of the common Englishman had not changed since 1914. He had not wanted war, but he had engaged in it; he liked it oven less than he expected, but he proposed to see It through; and if, which God forbid, similar circumstances arose In 1929, he would do the same again.