At the War

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 10, 6 December 1916, Page 3

At the War

NO. 2. HOPE AND GLORY. (By C.S.K.) L have decided that 1 shall write this tale. I have had doubts whether it had sufficient publ'c interest or whether it actually has anything in it at all. After some thought, hut without deciding the points in question, no doubt on the principle that when in doubt it is better to do anything than to do nothing, I have decided to proceed with it. We were pushed up to the Somme in easy, stages. We went along the main road, turning off to a field on the right, where a rough camp had been established. Previous to this we saw no evidences of war beyond one big French trend) running across the road and a few big patches of barbed wire out in the fields, though some fields had been cropped and harvested during the current season. A couple of quiet days were spent at this camp, during which time I think the whole of the division marched over the hill, past the Casualty Clearing Station, over the numerous lines at thc then rail-head and across a field to a small but deep, and swift stream for a swim and wash. Then about noon on Sunday, September lOtb, the Second Brigade shook itself together anil hoofed it off towards where the trouble was. There were no signs of bombardment, but the church is a good deal knocked about. Thereafter there were ample evidences of the ravages of war. For some distance the chief evidence was nice clean shell holes on the hill-side—-bigger or smaller holes cleanly cut out of the turf'*and with good spaces between them. This continued till we camped for the night (the Second Otago Battalion) on a deal - space between the road and a wood. The clear space was plentifully peppered with shell-holes, which, with a little excavation, made excellent sleeping-places. The wood was a poor affair. Probably previous to July Ist it was as pleasant and welldoing a wood as any in France;' hut at some time since then explosives of.all sorts had been pumped into it, and the trees were stripped of most of their foliage and here and there huge boughs had been torn-off. Sunday and Monday nights were passed here, with an almost continuous stream of big shells passing overhead to the Germans. At 3 p.m. on Tuesday the Kith Company took' • to the road for the last lap. And then Logan to open out a scene of proper desolation. The shell-holes were much closer together on the hill-sides, which began to take on the look of n tumbled sea, as a British newspaper correspondent expressed it. There was no sign of a building anywhere, except at one point where a room of a big building had been spared. There must have been some buildings, ami the inference, is that they had been levelled and obliterated. At this point a sign-post indicated that another town was away to the left. 1 Further on a wood ran down to the side of the road and one could form some idea of the difficulty experienced in rooting the Germans out ol such places. The wood itself was crisscrossed with trenches and the spaces between were as the tumbled sea with the holes made by shells, and the infinite variety of trench mortar bombs with which thh British make Frit:y spring off his tail. I he British had dug in just at the side of the road. Properly they had not dug in, they had only got down about four leet and the trench was very wide-wider than deep in fact. In the mind’s eye, and basing conditions on inference, one saw the British resting in tiiis miserable shelter between attacks, the while working the trench mortars which worked forward with the infantry. Thereafter would follow a dash into the wood, and what a dash it must have been! There could he no heslitancy about it. 1 p and at it with a determination deal, dumb and blind no othvr way could it he done. So, I make no doubt, was it done. And the reconstruction of the scene of heroism afforded me a glow—the glow which conies from deep down, m the contemplation of great deeds. But beyond that glow there was nothing hut a sense ol desolation in w hat 1 saw—tlie tumbled sea ol clay, smashed gnus, unused shells and french mortar bombs .spilled by I he side ol the road and the shrededne.ss ol everything that had met the fierce rille lire. . . In twenty-four hours I revisited the scene-,, hut by night and I saw nothhie (and eared less) of them. In time I got between clean white sheen; at Rouen ami i experienced the blissful feeling of having lauded borne. The M. 0., the nurses and everybody was very nice and the loud uas a change from field rations. I was warm and comfortable, and feeling at peace with everybody and everything. And there* was a gramaphoue. And it ha I all the jiggoty tunes there ever were. 1 said to my seif: “Tins is jus the correct sort of gramaphone.

The jiggoty times bucked one up marvellously. There were several comic songs. One could not distinguish the words, hut the jiggety tune and tin* tone of voice did the trick—promoted that large, pleased feeling which follows on a good dinner. There were jiogety instrumental selections which I had never hoard before, and which had I heard I should no doubt have condemned because of their very jiggitiness. But a bent leg makes the difference. I was prepared to take anything in the way of hnek-up juice, like the dipsomaniac whose stock of legitimate stagger-juice is exhausted. There was a comic song about a gasmeter man —one verse and the rest of the record taken up by patter. It was the limit of twaddle—there was no body in it whatever, hut it was bright. Then there was the song about a man who had a coeoannt. The tune was the perfection of jiggitiness. This chap seemed to have won a cocoanut at a, cock-shy and he seems to have kept it by him for some time for it figured as the hero of about eight verses. \V hat all his adventures were about T cannot say, the words could not he caught. In one verse* I believe the owner offered the eneoamit to an afflicted Jew who had lost one fif the halls from his sign. The last verse I have some recollection of. The eoeoannt-iiiau got. up one morning and decided to join the hunt. He was decided to he prepared for all eventualities and sought out his coeoannt going under the heel to get it. Who the doctor is is nor very clear, hut the song winds up its jamboree of nonsense and jiggitiness approximately as follows:

The doctor said : “Come out of that

Da dndda da-da, da-da.” I said: “Don’t worry yourself old | cock— I’m after me eokernut.” And then . Then a record was | put on—an instrumental reifdering. of | Elgar’s “Laud of Hope and Glory. ’ | The effect of the jiggity melodies was | gone in an instant, all my sent!- | mental equipment was gently pulled p out by the roots and heaved all over the shop, and I was hack in the desn- p fin inn of ihe road, and my. heart | hied and, glowed for the trials and j| the glory of the lads who had laid in || the low shelter, worked the treifeh ; p mortars and prepared lor the spring , into the inferno of the wood by the j | roadside. I do not know one of the p words of the song, hut it struck me p that for such deeds such music was | fitting. Previous to hearing the music f had practically forgotten the vail *y p of desolation, but at the first strains || the scene rushed hack on me, as, in- p deed, I believe it will until the end of | time. If it is so it will he well, ho- p cause then I shall always have a re- p minder of the glorious lights which | have been of almost daily occurrence p in this great battle which has now | been in progress for two months and p a : half. I