"HAVE THEY TURNED US DOWN?”

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 22 March 1917, Page 4

"HAVE THEY TURNED US DOWN?”

THE CALL FROM THE, TRENCHES.

j Corporal Redman, writing to his ] father, Sergeant Redman, Police Station, Yamba, Clarence River, N.5.W.,. from France on December 28, says: “I have had no chance to write to you for a long time, as we have been up in the first line of trenches for six weeks without a spell, up to our thighs in mud and water. The weather here now is bitterly cold, and all the lads have bad feet standing up totheir thighs in water in a trench for 48 ours at a time. If some of the chaps in Australia saw the way the boys not half their age stick it here like bricks, they would be ashamed of themselves —that is, if there is any shame in them. What we see in the papers lately makes us ask ourselves the question, ‘Have the people in Australia turned us down ’ If they saw lads, who should be home with their mothers, standing in a wet trench, cry ing with the pain of their swolleirand aching feet they would begin totaink, and the reason of it is that we can’t get enough rest out of the trenches* My feet are just getting back to normal again after being swollen up for about six weeks, but the way they ache at night keeps me awake We are all anxiously waiting for the spring to come —that is, if it is our luck to see it out till then —for I think in thespring there will be a big move up: that will hasten the end. I had four months in th e hospitals in England, three weeks out, then was ordered straight back into the trenches again,. A lot more besides me have had to re* turn before they are fit for the but there is nothing else for it. If wecan’t get help, then we must stick it. to the lasT.”