Man Behind the Gun.
THE RULING THOUGHT. The “ Eye-witness ” who writes from the British headquarters in an article dated March 20, says : “ If there is one thing—and it has become even more noticeable during the last few weeks —which strikes those who go about amongst our men, whether in the trenches, in billets, or in the hospitals, it is that the thought uppermost in their minds is not of their own hardships and sufferings, but of the progress of the war in general and of operations on our front in particular. The first question that a wounded man usually asks is “ How far did we get ? Did we take such and such a trench or position ? He may have been maimed for life, most of his comrades may have been killed ; but these things concern him little in comparison with the point of whether his battalion or company accomplished the task assigned to it. “ Nothing else matters. All the-e questions of hours of work and wages which are agitating his friends at home are utterly strange to him. He accepts everything, the hoaviest losses to his unit as well as his own personal misfortunes, in complete cheerfulness, so long as he knows that we are winning. “ Not that the feeling throughout the Army has ever been other than one of supreme confidence in the eventual result ;
but there is now something more than that. Every man feels that the long dreary Winter is past, and that it is no longer a question merely of ‘sticking it’ in wet trenches under a rain of high explosives from above and the ever present danger of a mine from underneath. He feels that the time for the realisation of his hopes is arriving, and that he is in his own words, going to get a bit of his own back,”
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Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 4, 16 July 1915, Page 3
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307Man Behind the Gun. Huntly Press and District Gazette, Volume 4, 16 July 1915, Page 3
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