WAR LETTERS TO WIFE.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXX, Issue 11126, 8 February 1930, Page 9

WAR LETTERS TO WIFE.

HEAL IST 1C BOOK BY BRITISH SOLDIER. AGOXV OF WAITx A 1 CO-CAKED FLANDERS. Colonel Rowland .Feilding's "War Letters to a Wife” are of surpassing merit and interest. There is perhaps. no war hook which gives a truer and more intimate picture of 1i fe in the infantry during the agony in the mud, or which shows such restraint from unjust criticism. Colonel Codding served in Ihe (midstream Guards, with which (as General Sir John Consonby remarks in an introduction) his family was closely connected, and from IUI6 onward commanded a battalion, first of I ishnicn and then of Londoners.. His courage was legendary: lour times he was reported dead; and General I’unsonby remarks: “How he managed to survive the war will always remain a mystery to me and many others.” In the terrible, battle of Loos he "'as in one of the hottest corners, till' .1 lohenzollern Redoubt. “It would (he writes) he an exaggeration to say that the parapets at this place are built up of dead bodies, hut it is true to say that they are dovetailed with them, and everywhere arms and legs and heads protrude. During tin’s lighting I have seen thousands' of British dead, but the dead Germans I have seen 1. could almost

count on my fingers.” Amid all these horrors our British inlantry kept stout hearts. “AA'liat wonderful people are our infantry! And what a joy ii is to- he with them ! When I am here I feel—well, I can hardly describe it- • • • They p'ay their part uncomplainingly. . .

Freezing or snowing or drenching rain p always smothered in mud: you may ask any of them any moment ol the day or night: ‘Arc you cold?’ or ‘Are you wet ’ —-and you will get but one answer. The Irishman "ill reply—always with a smile—‘Not too Cold, sir,' or ‘Not too wet. sir.' ”

And of his Irish troops in front ot Loc-re, he says: “The most imaginative mind could not conceive . . . the heroic manner in which the men who hold it (the front line) face its dangers and discomforts-—the mud and t!ie slush and the snow; often knee-deep and deeper still in water, pounded incessantly. . . . Through it all they stand, frozen and half paralysed by the cold and wet with no individual power of retaliation. from his Irish battalion Colonel Feilding. was transferred to the loth London Regiment., Ist Battalion, whom lie specially commends: “They are like lions, these London men. . .

The standard of courage among these Intis is so high that men who would he considered brave elsewhere do not seem particularly brave here. In tact, they would look like shivering rabbits beside some of them.”

There is a tender reference to Captain Vyvyan Harmsworth. who- sh.ntained mortal injuries in the fiychtintr about Oamhrni in 1917. ‘' Vyvyan was a /-.tie fellow. With bis wealth and backing he could have had the pick of the Staff jobs. Hut lie was nor built that way. Me was always with the ligating portion of h:s regiment —except during the times when Jie was recovering from his wounds.”