TRENCH JOURNALS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2885, 25 September 1916, Page 5

TRENCH JOURNALS

LITERARY:DIVERSIONS AT THE FRONT. ... • . Of trench journals there is no epd and they come from every sort of unit. The . ''Whizz-Bang'", is the monthly organ of| Durham: Light Infantry. In. The title of tho "lodine Chronicle"you catch the scent of tho R.A.M.G.The "Vies' Patrol" is m'n by a' new, Canadian Battalion justly proud of_ its recent affiliation to tho Victoria Rifles of Canada. The Canadians are the most prolific .of trench journalists. Besides tho "Vies' Patrol" they bring out tho "Trench Echo;", written by a vivacious battalion from Winnipeg, the "Listening Post," in.d several more.' The "Forty-niner," the "R.M.R. Growler," and tho "Twentieth Gazette" are names more openly -regimental-. Tha title of "Now and Then" is'itself a frank confession of the .'difficulty of coming out punctually to thVday in w time of "great pushes;" ,-Tho "Brazier" is full of 'nappy associations for, old dwellers in:miefwintertrenches. But the most picturesque and •• 'suggestive title of all is that of the "Dead Horse* Corner Gazette." A' trench journal is Jike nothing so much as a public' school or university, magazine. It shows tho samo apparent pre'-occupation with games; the results of tho winter's footbalfbehind the Hues aro tabulated and reviewed with becoming seriousness, and the prospective strength of noxt season's team is disousscd hopefully. There is, again; the sarao measures of relaxation, _ in! print, of tho restraints of discipline j nearly everybody, except the CO. and tho second-in-command, is gontlyj "chaffed." There is' the same large output of verse parodies and imitations —echoes of Kipling, G. K. Chesterton, and Omar Khayyam. And there is any; amount, of joking oa topics which in the British Expeditionary Force never grow old or fade—the trials of mess presidents, the' complexity of the established forms of official correspondence, the smallness of Belgian beer,' tho craft and' subtlety occasionally used by the ■ rank and file to obtain, now issues of trousers or boots before tho old ones l are really decrepit, and-' the .narrowness' of the' Army's range of. medicines for minor complaints. Much of tho joking _is quite good, like the story of the Irish private who complained one day of a sore foot, was given a "No. Nine" (the most cele- . brated and least revered pill in the whole pharmacopoeia' of military medicine) and reappeared next day .at sick parade, saying, "I put it under me fut and divil a'bit of good did it do me. sorr." Tho-geometrical definitions.of . ' a subaltern as "that which has position but no magnitude," and of a Turkish communique as "that which lie's equally on any point," are neat too, and one can imagine tho. original roar of laughter in tho dug-out when an eloquent man narrate' 1 , how "we were shelled one day for 36 hours."