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THE NERVE TORTURE OF BATTLE

NATURE'S ANTIDOTE Mr. William Philip Simms, the American war correspondent, who has returned from a tour of tho Champagne battlefield, says:— "How can they stand it? I should think the soldiers at the front, 'living with death and the dead about them all the time, would go insane." One frequently hears such a remark as that. The answer is simple enough: The men very quickly get used to it all. Tako this as an example: At sundown to-day, as a party of us returned to our motors, which wo had left so that we might walk over tho Champagne battlefield, a pair of two-wliceled carts were pushed hurriedly past us. Upon a cauvas stretcher, suspended under . the horse-shoe-shaped axle of each pusli-cart, lay the form of a soldier, fully clothed. "Wounded?" someone asked. "Yes," and officer replied; and changed tho subject. But the soldiers pushing _ the carts were strangely careless in their handling of woundexl men. They were walking very rapidly, and took little pains to keep the wheels out of the smaller shellholes which everywhere pitted the ground. Tho forms rocked and pitched and swayed, and seemed evor on the point of being tossed out on the ground. Also, the strango attitude of oae of the forms fascinated me; the soldier was on his back, and his arms were crossed in front of, but not touching, his face. Nor did the arms touch each othor. And' with every drop of a wheel into hole or rut these arms waved about rigidly, never changing their relatiyo position in the air; awkward, and minus all support, the anns stuck just where they were. A second man accompanied each vehicle, making four soldiers in all, and these two extras, not paying much attention to the forward and free ends of tho stretchers which they were along to handle, were "kidding" each other. Ono threw a clod of dirt at tho second, and the second replied by flinging his metal helmet'at the first. There was a burst of laughter, and as the carts came to a stop to permit the pushers to mop their perspiring brows, tho two youngsters —they were not much more than twenty years old, either of them —began to chase each other round and round the stretchers. . In tho meantime we drew up to tho little procession. Tho. soldier on tho stretcher, the ono with his arms crossed before his face, still held his position without moving. Of course you have guessed it; tho soldiors on tlio two stretchers were dead, dead as door-nails. They had been killed tho night before in the front trenches. Under cover of the twilight haze, a purple mixturo of damp vapours and cannon smoke, these four members of their company were evacuating them to the rear, where they would be buried in one of tho numerous now Champagne cemoteries. \ Lifting a torn cap from tho faco of tho soldier with the crossed arms, someone asked: "How did it happen?" "Stray bullet," the' cart-pusher responded laconically. "Whew!" he addbd, "it's pretty warm to-day!"_ There was a black spot in the right temple of the man who had caught the stray bullet, and a blackish streak ran down tho side of his face.. His death must have been instantaneous, and ho had lain and stiffened just as ho had Men, his amis before his face. Ho liad been but a.very young man, and a small and young moustache, waxen light in colour, was on his upper lip. The cap was replaced, and we went our way, leaving the living and' dead to go theirs. Now don't misunderstand. These four men escorting tlieir dead comrades to tho graveyard were not unfeeling, pitiless men in the ordinary sense. Taken from refined homes, very probably, where the sight of anyone m pain hurt them deeply, and from an environment where the presenco of the dead was depressing and awesome, they wore suddenly plunged into scenes of war and slaughter and death and acony until their senses were deadened. Their power of appreciation had been practically nullified. Dead men 110 longer awed them; blood no longer sickcned thorn. Nature, which makes irien fight and mutilate and kill each othor, hat} furnished its own antidote for horror; otherwise these men, instead of "kidding" each other, would have been jibbering lunatics. I knew one man—his wife and little girl live in Paris—who, after passing through the Battle of Champagne, had to be sent to a special hospital. He was not wounded. His norves had been shattered; his mental balance upset. He liad not been able to adjust liimsolf in time. Nature had_ let him go 011 weighing and appreciating all that transpired about him. The other condition is the only possible safeguard against going insane; it is the War God's own anaesthetic.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19160111.2.84

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2666, 11 January 1916, Page 9

Word count
Tapeke kupu
806

THE NERVE TORTURE OF BATTLE Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2666, 11 January 1916, Page 9

THE NERVE TORTURE OF BATTLE Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2666, 11 January 1916, Page 9

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