WAR DIARY

Hokitika Guardian, 11 July 1929, Page 2

WAR DIARY

GERMAN TRIBUTE TO THE BRITISH.

THE STORM OF STEEL. By Ernst J linger.

This diary of a German infantry officer is unquestionably one of the best war books that have yet appeared. It is if special interest to the British reader, because it deals so largely with the fighting on the British front. Lts author, a lieutenant in the 73nl Hanoverian Fusiliers, was wounded fourteen times and received both the Iron Cross and the Order of .Merit.

Tin* B.itish public may be a little suspicious of German panegyrics. But we see no reason to doubt the good faith of the author’s special preface to the English edition of his work. In that preface he says: In our talks in the trenches, in the dug-outs, or on the fire-step, we 1, often talked of the “Tommy,” and, as any genuine soldier will easily understand. we spoke of him very much more respectfully than was commonly the case with the newspapers of those days. There is no . one less likely to disparage the lion than the lionhunter.

And again: Of all the troops who were opposed to the Germans on the great battlefields the English were not only the most formidable, but the manliest and the most chivalrous. I rejoice therefore to have an opportunity of expressing in time of peace the sincere admiration which I never failed to make clear during the war, whenever 1 came across a wounded piau or a prisoner belonging to tlie British forces.

BROKEN BY WET AND COLD. The author was not only a front sokiior, but also .one who declares chat he took a delight in fighting. On the “horrors of war,” of which his diary is full, he makes this comment:

The horrible was undoubtedly a part of that irresistible attraction that drew us into the war. A long /Jiiod of law and order, such as our generation had behind it, produces a real craving for the abnormal, a craving that literature stimulates. Among other questions that occupied us was this: what does it look 'like when there are dead lying about? ' At the . third battle of Ypres he dwells on the misery which the troops on both sides had to endure owing to the rain and mud;

We stood shivering with cold and without a dry stitch on our bodies, knowing that when next we were shelled we had no protection whatever (owing to the impossibility of making dugouts or trenches in the mud). It was a cheerful situation. And here I permit myself the observation that even artillery fires does not break the resistance of troops so surely as wet and cold. The translation of this stirring book is remarkably good, and as Mr Mo'ttram says in his introduction, though there are undoubted mistakes of fact in it, “the whole is stamped with truth.”