Alec Langford

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 228, 5 November 1943, Page 7

Alec Langford

I MUST g0 round and see them. Words mean so little and so much. They’re all we have in which to say I’m sorry. I have sympathy. I think I understand. I remember just before Passchendaele his dad and I were just his age. _ We made our wills. We gave each other messages, telling each other

slightly shametaced, that of course we’d both come through, that this was just in case... . We did come through. We both came back. But the thing that missed us twenty years ago has found its way to Bill, I’ve never felt my age until to-day. Age becomes meaningless unless the young ones die. And Bill was very young. A bright boy, too. We talked before he left. He didn’t go like we did full of fire, thinking ourselves as heroes, rather liable to gulp over 2 flag, full of songs like Tipperary, Rose of No Man’s Land, Keep the Home Fires Burning. This time they have no songs to speak of. This time they have no fire. Only a steady purpose. They knew more than we did about a lot of things. Politics. Economics. Psychology. I even heard them one evening dissecting that paper-hang-ing chap. Trying to work out why he was. Piecing his mind together, bit by bit, lining it up with his history, saying perhaps, if this had been, saying perhaps it was because. . . Well, all we did was say we'd hang the Kaiser. I must go round and see them. Words mean so little and so much, They’re all I have in which to say I’m sorry. I have sympathy. I think I understand.