IN HOSPITAL.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 77, 30 November 1914, Page 3

IN HOSPITAL.

A. CHAT WITIt -rfOTjNDED SOLDIERS.

There are wounded soldiers at Bright on-hundreds of thcm-soldiers home from the war. Some of them will journey no farther. At least their graves will be beneath the green grass of the homeland they died for. others of them are already out and about, and for them the day is not far distant when the fighting line and its grim chances will know them once again (writes a London correspondent). No one is surprised that there should be wounded soldiers in Brighton. By this time there are wounded soldiers in many places up and down England. By this time many of the country mansions town houses, hotels and public institutions that have been transformed into hospitals are houses of rest and refuge for thousands of brave men- There are streets in London itself that are stiev. n with tan for the silencing of London's roar, where officers lie grievous under their hurt. At Charing Gross the hospital hangs a banner across the highway demanding “ Quiet fo* the wounded ”. That is the way of it too at Brighton I found the red cross flag waving from the new buildings of Brighton College. Just now the rooms and corridors should be echoing to the cheerfulness of battalions of boys returned to school from their Sussex homes. Instead of them uneherful men lie in classrooms* row upon row, many of them, alas, in hard case.

There are many wounded whom it is not well to see. There are others who are worth any man ’s while. They carry honourable scars, but they have escaped early and easily from the indescribable inferno we think to dimitss by calling it the battle of this or that Some of them arc still a little dazed by it, and talk as a man under stress sometimes will, for relief and forgetfulness. They are mostly young menboys, even. Such an experience as they have suffered is as far beyond our thought ,as it was outside their longest calculation.

“ Noise ” said the red haired boy with the laughing blue eyes and freckled face, “I can tell you what it is like They fired and fired. Machine guns, seige guns, howitzers —all sorts, all the time. Why wo’re not all deaf I don’t know. Most of the time they didn’t hit anything., They first fired and fired for the row of the thing. Shoot ? No, they can't shot. That is, the infantry can’t. The artillery is wonderful. They spot, our positions at »>nce. It’s like a game. And when they ’ve spotted them it’s time to shift. Tsat the infantry come along firing their guns off their hips, anyhow. No aim—just shoot and trust to luck.' ’

He had a shattered hand. " Bit of shrapnel,” he said. ” No, didn’t notice it at the time. All I wisli is that they’d get the bullet out of my neck. I’ll feel better then.”

An older man, who had seen fighting in South Africa, and had just been in the British retreat and advance from the batle of the Marne,confessed that this time he had seen all the soldiering ho wanted to see. " South Africa !’’ he scoffed. “■ Why , that was no war alongside this. The big' guns alone knock it silly. And the mobs of men. Never saw such crowds. They came at us in thousands and all at once. No, its not to see arms and legs flying past you. I thought I was out —but it was only a knock on the shoulder and a smashed arm. Go back ? Of course I will, and pretty soon, too. We owe them a lot yet. ’ ’ There are Cameron Highlanders at Brighton, and Argylls,. and other Scots Brawny men, indeed, and some of them splendidly handsome young: fellows, bright of eye and big of limb. They were not talking much. They were in too great demand - as the recipients of the tobacco and cigarettes of admiring visitors. They shovelled those goods together with an energy begotten of much

practice. “ Cigarettes,” laughed one, to me, “ Man, ■we ’ve ben wading in to them all tlie way across from France. Casks of them inside just now, too. Could a’ -done with one or two in the trenches. Wet ? Aye, I was a cake o’ mud. Yes, we shot a few, A’m thinkin’ they’ll not bo a gassin’ about the kilts much after this. Poor devils—they got it in the neck.”

“ And so did we ” a boy beside him remembered. He was a Brighton lad, and as nearly as possible overcome by the thought of being actually at home again, and within sight of his familiar sea. “So did we'. Seven of ns got out of that mess on the hill. We had thirty or forty to begin with. Saw' things that day, Jock. God for you to be somewhere else.

Jock laughed, lie nad seen all he ‘wanted to see at that somewhere else. The Brighton boy did not give him a chance, however.

“ There wore 30 of the Fusiliers a little''way "along. I saw a. shell burst iioht amongst them. . ’ Struth ! We eoukl only find pieces of them. Me ? Oh, in the'trenches. My rifle was hit first, smashed to bits. I was looking around for another when I got this through the wrist. Wean through, and I was’at worrying, but just then a bit of shrapnel hit me in the foot, and I was down and out. Had to lie there twelve hours, one dead man across my chest, another alongside me. That's better than seeing them with their heads blown off., Got a crawl on .in the middle of the, night. Made for a haystack. Fighting all that night with artillery. , Top of. the stack got, shot off, then one side, then the other side. Thought it was about time to

move. Crawled across a field of man- j gold wurzels. Still crawling when they j picked me up. Great time, don.’t think, j Frightened in first fightNo chaheel r Man next to you fires, you fire., /Every- | one gets up and runs. You run with f l them. Down agaiiy and,,up again, al-i ' fr.orrof liov

thing I saw r was the charge of the Scots Greys. That was a sight! Full gallop right into their guns, and then hack and hack. Terrible slaughter. “ The Germans?” he continued meditatively. “My word, it was all right when thev used to come at us in close order. Couldn’t miss them. They don’t do it now'. Met 20 or 30 in an orchard one day. Huge men, six feet six all of them. Couldn’t miss them, either. But they’re dirty dogs, anyhow'. Kill everything they see, spear the sheep, shoot the cows—why they oven wring the necks of the fowls they come across. Horses? Oh, they cut off one leg and leave them. Dirty dogs, all right.” And so on, in ferocious vein, until it w r as hard to believe that this soared and hardened soldier was no more than a twenty-year-old boy, who until a few weeks ago, had lived a boy’s life in the midst of that plea sant English city by the sea. As I left him, inded, he asw saying, “ Yes, I fired 200 rounds. Must have Idled a few. ’ ’ Such is war.