SMOKE OF BATTLE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 47, 18 June 1915, Page 6

SMOKE OF BATTLE.

PACKET OF CIGARETTES THE KEY TO THE SOLDIER'S HEART.

(By WILL IRWIN.)

A British chaplain, home on leave foi ] a few days, tells mo that just before lie left the trenches he encountered a private who was opening a package from home and swearing frightfully. "My man! What language 1" said the chaplain. Tommy turned upon the rebuke a look of dumb despair. " 'Ere's the sixth muffler since Christmas," he said. "Why the hell don't somebody send me some cigarettes ?" This has been called a war of nerves and a war of endurance and a war of starvation. All these terms fit, but to my mind it is a war of tobacco. This gentle drug may be unnatural in time of peace, an acquired and vicious habit. It is no time to argue that question. But war Is an unnatural state of oeing, and in that unnatural state tobacco fits. It Is the sweet consoler, the imperfect sul>stitute for what a man has left behind. At the end of a long, weary march, when the dust has caked under his clothes or the mud has encased his hoots into armour, when his kit on his back seems to weigh two tons, a pipe or a cigarette gets his nerves back in ordei. W hen the new recruits go for the first time under the ordeal of shell fire they reach instinctively' for a smoke.

On the long nights of the tranches, with the big shells bursting capriciously and the rifle bullets behaving like swarm of super-hornets, it is tobacco which keeps the nerves steady. The wise officer, anticipating an attack, ordres his men to smoke. The great grievance of the military aviator is that, owing to the inflammable narure of petrol, he cannot in his lonely adventuring through the unstable element draw consolation from nicotine.

A British captain, remarking upon the uncertain temper of the Germans, said to me once : " Sometimes, you know, they knock our wounded in the head, and sometimes they stop to give them cigarettes.'' A symbol of kindness, for the wounded man, if he has any vitality left in him, wants cigarettes most of all. A soldier in hospital told how he lay for six hours with a shattered leg, uncertain whether he would be taken by the Germans, rescued by the British, or left between the lines to strave. "But, thank goodnwss, 1 had a fresh packet cigarettes that I hadn't even opened, I he said, "and a box of matches, .so I | kept going until the Guards found me." | 1 used to visit the hospitals in Paris i and Calais. When first I came I brought' I them fruit. When I got experience of i the wounded I brought only cigarettes, i That business of getting well is dull, i hard work. Even reading palls. There l is little convercation. Like as not the , man in the next cot has no energy for j talk, and the Gorgon nurses arc chary lof admitting visitors. A cigarette, with the gentle visions which tobacco brings, ' help marvellously to pass the time while the torn muscles are knitting, or to | make the wounded forget that constant, | irritating pain which- accompanies the ! return of life to dead tissues. Once in Belgium during the early days I stumbled into a place where no alien civilian had a right to be. The Germans had been fighting the British; the sight of English-looking clothes ana tho sound of an English accent did nothing to make an American popular in those surroundings: it was a ticklish afternoon. In the midst of it a heavyfaced sergeant called us over to his squad and made pretence at least of running me through with a bayonet. My companion, with more presence of mind than I, opened his cigarette-case and offered all the contents to the German. He broke into smiles and consented to inspect our papers. Do not forget when all is done that the creature comfort which Tommy and Sandy and Jean wants most is tobacco —and plenty of it—'Weekly Despatch.