"FIGHTING MAD."

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 8, 29 January 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

"FIGHTING MAD."

A MILITARY CHAPLAIN'S NOTES

A chaplain at one of our great home military _ hospitals perhaps gains as much insight into the character of the present warfare as any person who lias not actually been in the fighting line itself. As lie goes his rounds among the wounded soldiers, says the "Scotsman," ho hears many a queer story, such as never gets itself put into print, and there aro little touches innumerable which reveal more than can lie conveyed in the most lucid of dispatches. All (hat is told is recounted in that half gay and careless tone which the Gorman has condemned as not serious enough for the game of war into which ho has imported so many terrors. Their sufferings are not worth talking about! " He jests at scars who nevar felt a wound." snys Shakespeare. But these men with wounds which, while not so wide as a church door, are yet deep enough and long enough to be described in the officii bulletin as serious, treat them ca trifling—would in some cases rather not speak of them at all. But every now and then unconsciously they reveal (something of the terrible nature of the fighting in which they have been engaged. To a wounded man who is lying dreaming the sound of a cart rumbling along the street outside the hospital resembles the thunder of tho fearsome German siege guns, and he starts up wide awake in his cot searching hurriedly among the bedclothes for his rifle. Or a clattering housemaid washing the ward floor draws her pail towards her with a horrid, grating noise, and a man in a bed near bv who has been dozing, springs forward with a cry. " What's the maitter wi' ye. Georgie? " asks his neighbour. " Man," says Geord'e. terribly ashamed of his fright. " I thocllt I was back in the trenches." And as they sink back upon their pillows once more with a s ; 'gh of relief the faces of those men say Thank God as plainly as though they had spoken the words. SCOTLAND'S PART. Th?se military hospitals witness very emphatically to the great part thu-t Scotland is playing on the battlefields of France and Belgium. Though the hospital to which the present writer is attached is deep in the Midlands of. England—it is a large teachers' training college converted for the time being—vet almost one-half of the men are Scots" belonging to famous Highland regiments, and mostly men from the North—from Aberdeen and Huntly, from Elg'.n and Inverness and Nairn, and'from the " far off Hebrides." They have been through it all from Mons to the last phase of the Battle of the Aisne. and some of their regiments, as in this case of the CameroiLs at the Aisne, have suffered terribly in killed and wounded. Will they face these hardships again P Nearly all, and especially the younger men. with an avidity that is hardly intelligible. The reasons g'ven are varied. They want to have a " little bit of their own back, or they want to avenge a comrade, or thev are mad at the loss of their officer, who invariably is " one of the best officers in the British Army," or they want to " do one >n " for the German Emperor or it is Bonnie Scotland that stirs theii blood, or—these are the chivalrous knights-they are wild, boiling wild, at what they have seen of the German treatment of women and children. But all express a clear conviction of ultimate triumph. ADMIRATION FOR OFFICERS. Thev aro full of admiration for their officers. Again and over again k when they are speaking of some particularly tight corner in which they have been, they use some such expression as " It was a verv good thing for us that we weiy, led by cue of the best officers in the \rniv." Some have a more intimate story to tell. A Gordon relates how in the trenches on P of the officers was mortally wounded. " Oh." he cried, "■ they've d'ono for me now; lie down. men,"lie down. Keep your heads -" and that storv is complete. "Fear, queried one cheery fellow with an assortment of wounds all over him, ' it s no good being afraid. And," he proceeded modestly. " it's not being brave e : ther. You're just fighting mad." For the enemy be has a supreme contempt. '■ They'll only fecit when they're aboot ten tate wan, an' when they so? tho shino o' a bayonet they rin He a rabbit." The more recent arrivals in tho wards tell that " funk " is very widespread now in the Gorman ranks. But tli,, amazing thing is how these men recover from their wounds. They aro brought in one week labelled as " serious " cases, wounded perhaps in many places, and on the corresponding day of next week their beds aro occupied by a fresli batch, and they themselves are ofr home to recruit. Most of all one learns in a hospital like this to endorse wit!' 'ill one's soul the truth of the words—Buller's, were they not?—"tho men are splendid." Hero wo realise the true dignity and native worth of the common British soldier, a man often utterly undistinguished in appearance, in educat'on. or in mental ideals, but capable all the while of achieving the noblest of heroisms when the time of testing comes. HE WAS PUZZLED. Sergeant: " Halt I You can't go there." Private Murphy: " Why not sir?" Sergeant: " Because it's tho general's tent." Private Murphy: "Then bedad, whp-t are they doing with 'Private' above the door? "