"THEY ARE SPLENDID"

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2348, 2 January 1915, Page 11

"THEY ARE SPLENDID"

APPRECIATION OF OUR SOLDIERS. The following are extracts "from a letter written on October 18 by a Staff officer with the Third Division, BritishExpeditionary Force, to his wife:— ■ "The fighting is'pretty severe and continuous ; now with ' us. *We have been gradually, but slowly pushing the Germans back. There is a good fight going on now in the dark, probably a night attack—the roll of rifle fire and booming, of the'guns—we are ajl sitting comfortably in a room just going to have dinner, vory much better off than the poor people in tho trenches. They havo a terrible time. . . .'. I wonder how long this war will go on. It seems to me it cannot long; the drain and strain : seems too heavy to last. I don't suppose people in England realise one quarter of the horror and terribleness of it all. One gets inured'and more cr less callous to all the things one sees after a time. What the inhabitants of the villages must suffer I can't think. Where we are now and the places we are passing through, fighting all the time, the houses are shattered to pieces, and many of them nothing but a pile of ashes.' You aee. these poor people following behind lis, and returning to their homes as soon as the Germans pavo been driven out, only to find their house a mass of ruins, and everything they possessed gone. Belgium, I suppose, has suffered most in that way; the Belgians, indeed, have had a'terrible time; I should think there is nothing left in their country.

"file loss in officers has been severe, and the question of replenishing them is a serious one.. Many of those we knew and whom I have seen constantly out here have gone, and many have had miraculous escapes. ' "The firing has ceased, and someone ! has just come in saying that the Germans made a counter-attack in the dark'andhave been repulsed. I think our troops are rplendid, and they have done magnificent work. You and people in England cannot realise all they have gone through. In the Battle of tho Aisne, which lasted some twentyorie days, the men who were in the > trenches—the majority without even an overcoat, the trenches full of watel? — were under fire day and night. >It was with great difficulty that any food cctuld bo got to them. - If any man-moved in daylight a storm of bullets immediately greeted him—and the nights were bitterly cold. And, then, perhaps, you will see the next day a regiment coming back—or what remains of them—the men all cheerful and joking, whistling, and singing as if they had gone throujrh nothing. And yet there are people who Bay the British Army has deteriorated. I think they are Bplendid."-