ENGLAND IN WAR TIME.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 749, 27 February 1915, Page 3

ENGLAND IN WAR TIME.

TE KUtTI NURSE'S IMPRESSIONS CHRISTMAS AT THE HOSPITAL. A RECRUITING EXPERIENCE. Further letters have been received from a Te Kuiti nurse who went Home in the hope of going to the front, and who ia now engaged under the-Red Cross Society in England, The following extracts from letters to her- friends at Te Kuiti convey an excellent picture of the conditions obtaining in England at present. "The people here are just kindness itself, and we will not think of leaving them except to go to France; or to become attached to the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. I am afraid there ia not much chance of the latter, but am pulling all the strings I can. Things have been fairly quiet in France and Belgium "for the past month, but during the laHt fortnight 60,000 more troops have gone out to the front, and the Great Western railway will be closed to traffic for three days next week as it will be moving troops to Southampton. The great difficulty has been the want of equipment, France had not a spare pair of boots to her army's name, and Russia needed almost everything. England has been supplying them, so the Second Army here to wait. They have got things going now, and are turning the necessary articles out much faster. Many factories have adapted their works to supply immediate necessities: one that used to make ornamental brass for bedsteads, now makes brass casings for shells; with little alteration the same machinery that made small parts of bicycles now makes some kind of clipß for rifles, and so on. I was taken to Winchester yesterday; the Cathedral is simply magnificent, I could not have imagined anything so beautiful. The town was full of soldiers, they are billetted everywhere, even in the school while the boys are away for their Holidays. There are 15,000 in the town and numbers more in the villages round. Great excitement in this village this morning. Two armoured motor cars and numbers of motor cycleß and soldiers came along and spent the morning manoeuvring. Our Tommies were in the thick of it, helping them with good advice, and telling them how things should be done. "Excuse mistakes; I am on'night duty, and instead of going to bed to-day, I went to London to see if there was anything doing at the New Zealand office Alas! there was not. "I had a circular from the War Office some weeks ago, asking particulars of training, etc. and whether I would go to Egypt if called upon. Of course, I said I would go, but have heard nothing further. j "Now I will tell you some of our small doings. On Christmas Eve I took a pilgrimage into the village and bought a lot of penny toys. After dinner I got some apples, cigarettes, and chocolates, which had been sent here for the men, and made up stockings for them. The two Dragoons had penny wooden horses which refused to stand up, and the Royal Field "Artillery men had toy cannons, and all had some sort of whistle. Well, you never in your life heard such a din as there was on Christmas morn- | ing. They had the time of their little lives, enjoyed themselves hugely, and blew all the whistles at once, and when I came down at 8 a.m. Jones, one of the Dragoons, had harnessed both horses together, fastened the cannon to them, and was carefully dragging them round wth a perfectly serious face. They are like a lot of children and just as irresponsible. | Theae is one that you would delight in. His name is Patrick Flynn. Ha has a brogue of great strength, and it is almost impossible for him to I Bpeak without an oath. A Canadian horse stepped on bis foot and broke a toe. When I asked him how it happened, he said, "Them be wild b s of horses, them Canadians, sister." I take no notice, for he does not know that he swears. When I wake him in the morning this i"b the usual conversation: "Are you awake, Flynn?" "Be God I am, sister." He | has glorious eyes, and a perfectly heavenly smile. He is 19; has been once wounded at the front, and was just ready to go back when the accident happened. When I started to massage the foot I said: "Now Flynn, this may hurt you a little, but no bad language if it does." "Be God, no, sister," he said with a shocked air—he is just lovely. "Christmas Day was the prettiest day I have ever seen. A very hard frost, and all the trees covered with quite long icicles, and when the sun came out it was just gorgeous. We all went to church, and I had the pleasure of carving two turkeys for the men's dinner. Lady Rosemary was in London, so Miss Holding and I had our dinner on our lonely own. I never saw anybody eat as those men did; it was a revelation. Somebody had sent them cigars, so after dinner I gave them two each, and you never saw' a mor* contented lot. They had an uproarious time all day. "On the Monday following Christmas Day, Lady Rosemary came home, and said there was to be a recruiting concert at Newbury, a town seven miles away, and she had promised to take the patients, subject to our approval, and asked us to go, too. We dtarted the patients off in the village motor 'bus at 6.50, and started ourselves in the motor, at 7.5. We overtook the 'bus about half way in the midst of a blizzard —rain, snow, and wind; it was a fearful storm. The poor chaffeur waß nearly blown away. We got to the concert hall and waited and waited, and no 'bus appeared. We were getting anxious, when, with a fearful racket, up came the 'bus with noise enough for a eteam roller. Well, Lady R., Effie and I marshalled them into the hall, and asked one of the committee to show them up the side aißle to their

seats, which were in front, and we went on ahead. When we were halfway up, there was a terrific clapping and applauding and cheering. We were craning our necks to see what was going on. When I looked round and saw our wounded heroes coming in single file up the aisle, crutches very much in evidence, and everybody cheering them to the echo —the two first were walking on cratches, and with a most pious look of conscious virtue on their faces, and the beggars hadn't been to the front at all; had both been hurt in barracks. We nearly died when we caught their eyes, and they had the grace to look a little abashed. The concert was got up by a Mrs Grinley, who made quite a nice speech. She was followed by an American lady, and then an old captain spoke. Of course, they were all asking for recruits, and offered a wrist watch to the first, and to every fifth recruit ud to 50. Then the recruiting began, and the men went up to sign on with the Recruiting Sergeants—about 47 altogether. Whilst they were signing on two or three of the male performers got at the piano and were'playing and singing "Soldiers of the King." With the band playing, the audience clapping, cheering, and shouting for all they were worth, you could never imagine anything like the scene, if you lived to be a hundred. There was a tipsy soldier wandering round amongst the band, making an abject ass of himself, but the committee would not put'him out on account of the recruits. The climax of the evening came when the first recruit went up. Mrs Harris presented him with the watch, then kissed him. The houße simply roared, and the drunken soldier signified his intention of recruiting over again just for the kiss. Of course all those who got presents had to be kissed, and each one looked more bashful than the last. Altogether, I laughed till I wept, and really felt rather more like weeping all the time. Some of them were such boys, and so many are killed. The casualty lists in the papers are appalling. Well, after it was all over, we collected our party, and marched them out to the 'bus surrounded by foolish girls, and the last we saw of them driving off was Flvnn, leaning out of the 'bus door, shouting, 'Are we down-hearted? Be God, we're not." I wish I could give you his brogue, it is the broadest I have ever heard. "On Sunday I got a message from Miss Holding to say Mr H. was going to Winchester next day, and would I care to go? It had been snowing the day before, and we had to go over the Downß, which were still covered. It was the moat beautiful drive I have ever had. We passed through several villages before arriving at Winchester, which, as you perhaps know, was once the capital of England. Talk of ancient history; it is history just to see it. Narrow winding streets, and old, old houses. We did a little shopping; thence to the Cathedral. One reads about English Cathedrals; this is the first I have been in. It is tha oldest and largest in England. Begun in 1070, and finished for the time in 1095, it has been much altered and added to since, but is all very ancient. The old boy who showed us round would pass by something with a wave of his hand, and say 'Oh, that is quite modern, only 200 years old, or so.' I could not have imagined that a mere building could be so vast, and so impressive. I could not begin to describe it. We were in it quite an hour, and did not see a quarter of it. One could spend weeks and weeks in it and not see half the details of carvings, etc. At one place we stood and looked down through a vista of beautiful arches, 510 yards, to an exquisite stained glass window at the end. There is one enormous window, made of the broken pieces of atained glass windows which were broken when Oliver Cromwell sacked the Cathedral. We met Mr Holding at his club, and lunched with him; got back to Kingsclere at 3.30 after a most delightful day. I had just got into bed, and was dropping off to sleep when Effie came to tell me that the 'Mummers' had come. I hurriedly dressed and went down. They are most quaint—an old English custom, nearly extinct. They are men dressed in a kind of uniform, made of strips of coloured paper with enormous head-dresses. They act a kind of little play, rather Shakespearean, and sing carols: God rest, ye merry gentlemen, etc. They just finished as I got down. The patients sang 'Tipperary' for them, and then they went. Yesterday Captain Portal went to the front. Lady was awfully upset, though she could not show it for anything."