(Letter going to Masongill today).
* * * * *
Another ‘scrap of paper’ for you to digest!
Rather a droll thing was told me yesterday by one of the Lancashire
Fusiliers (our Brigade)—he was taking a wounded Tommy down the
communication trenches—shot in the leg—and could only carry him by
throwing him across his shoulder—legs dangling in front. During the way
down the unfortunate Tommy got another one through the head—and when he
got him to the dressing-station he was cursed by the doctor who said
he had enough cases to deal with as it was and could do without _dead_
men—at which our Lancs hero cried ‘The —— liar! he told me he was hit in
the leg!’
_Some_body sent me a little book called ‘Aunt Sarah and the War’ the
other day. Many thanks and jolly good—whoever it was!
Send me the ‘Times’ every now and again—will you?
Must have another ‘go’ at Fritz—so once more ‘So long!’—when I am putting
out barbed-wire tonight I shall remember R.K’s
‘I wish me mother could see me now with a fence-post under me arm!’
* * * * *
It was with this screed that Oscar enclosed a set of his own verses,
about which we had a little correspondence later. They had only been
jotted down, he explained, to go into his letter to me, and he would not
hear of their emerging anywhere in print. ‘Heavens! I can get something
better off my chest than that,’ he protested, ‘if it comes to “type”!’
These private pages, however, are barely in that category, and, as even
Oscar allowed that his ‘doggerel’ was ‘true to experience,’ here those
verses are:
‘JUNE 13TH, 1915.’
Two long lines of sandbags twisted and intertwined,
With a felled tree here and a shell hole there and a ‘traverse’
undermined;
Fields which are dotted with men, down in the clover green;
A rifle bent and a pouch half spent and a ruin in between:
Scarcely a sound for token of what is taking place,
For hardly a word is spoken and hardly sign of a face.
Sudden—a shot outringing and—arms both backwards thrown,
A curse at his foe outflinging, the Sniper has met his own!
Silence again, and never a sound, but the swish of spades
As each side makes endeavour to work ere daylight fades:
Night, and the cover of darkness screens what the workers make,
And Belgium in her starkness is still as a mountain lake.
And so the day is over—the end as much in doubt—
And Fritz no nearer Dover; and so the papers shout:
‘At Przmysl and Epernay heavy battles have been fought,
But (Official) Ypres way there’s _nothing_ to report!’
This, at any rate, has been seen—if, indeed, not merely a dramatic
version of the ‘ripping shot’ mentioned in another letter of about this
date:
* * * * *
MY DEAREST AUNTIE,—You wrote me such a delightful letter and I loved
every word of it. Thanks so much also for the Cream and Coffee—A.1.—only
in this heat it won’t keep! If I may suggest so—Condensed Milk is
better—but I loved the Coffee and have writted to M: for more. I am
keeping them fairly at it at Hornton Street—what? They seem to be mad
about my letters: I can only say that I love every word from them and
from you too. Write again if you can spare the time—You have no idea
how cheery it is to get your letters from the Ration-party (food!) at
2.30 A.M. when one is feeling pretty hard-boiled! Talking of food we are
feeding like—well, like you seem to have fed at Hornton St.! _I’ll_ tell
you what _we_ (another 2/Lt and self) have of an evening:
3-6 eggs apiece
Soup (sometimes)
Tea or Coffee or Chocolate
Bread & Potted Meat & Butter and Jam
Vin Ordinaire! (pinched from a ruined ‘estaminet’ (pub!)
Dessert (Chocolate and anything we can rake up—dog biscuits etc:)
and then with very distended insides we go on our several duties—as
often as not sleeping for an hour or two—or crawling out in front
among ancient Frenchmen long since deceased or shoving up barbed wire
etc: Tonight I am on the last named job—I always nearly break my neck
over the beastly stakes! Fritz is as quiet as a lamb today—a simile
one cannot often employ when speaking of him! I hit a fellow yesterday
‘somewhere in France’—in other words he will find it very painful to sit
down for a while! It was a ripping shot—I used a French Rifle which I
am going to try and bring back with me. I have some unexploded shells
too—but can see No: 7 going to ‘kingdom come’ when one day Daddy strikes
a match on one—so I think I had better leave them alone here! It is
such a magnificient evening here—not a _sound_—but the birds singing
like mad—only now and then a shot rings out to waken one up and a
trench-mortar gets to work—last named very loud and noisy, but not v:
useful, like _some_ masters I used to know at Eton!
Straight behind us is ‘Wipers,’ and every 5 mins. to the tick a great
‘Uncle Sam’ comes whistling over and makes the town more of a scrap-heap
than ever: the pity of it! It gives the lie to Kipling’s topping lines
which I will put down simply because I love them like everything else of
his:
‘I do not _like_ my Empire’s foes nor call ’em _angels_—still
What _is_ the use of ’ating those whom you are paid to kill!’
Well—I could talk rot for pages about the life out here, and some day I
will let myself out on paper about it. But for ‘sensation!—sport!—sport
for sport’s sake’—do you remember Raffles at those lines in the play—3rd
Act?—that’s what one feels when crawling about at night. Every minute
one is living is a year—certainly I have learned more in 2 months than 20
years!
So long—you are a brick to write.
_All_ food mighty acceptable!!
Love to George if you see him.
Ever your affec: nephew,