Book Review

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 5, 9 April 1945, Page 21

Book Review

The soldier is not overwhelmed with admiration for the spate of war books cascading from the printing presses ; he does not bother with them much at all. If in his reading he comes across details of tactical disposition and movement he is apt to reflect that not even an Eighth Army General has a clear picture of what happened to any brigade between the Libyan border and Tobruk ; when he has sufficient interest to read through a war correspondent’s book he is likely to find little there to enlist his sympathy, for the correspondent has not been on patrol between Sidi Rezegh and Bel Hamed nor watched the approach of a Mark 4 tank over the sights of a 25-pounder gun. But in “ Gunner Inglorious ” the soldier will find on each of the two hundred pages a picture he will recognize and a sentiment he has known. The experience and reactions of the author, J. H. Henderson, are typical, as far as the experiences and reactions of an individual can be typical of a

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group, of hundreds of New-Zealanders who fought, were wounded, and captured in the second Libyan campaign. Henderson has, with the exception of a few stories which themselves are acceptable as typical, narrowly confined himself to what he felt and saw ; his memory is accurate and vivid ; his expression is the exact idiom of the Second New Zealand Division ; his outlook is the circumscribed one of the gunner, the private, the sapper, the trooper—his book is a record of war as those men know it.

How vivid is his memory is revealed in many unstudied details. One quotation will show it : The crew of Henderson’s gun has already suffered heavily from German mortars and machine guns when Webbo has his face smashed in by a shell splinter :—

Toppie and I lift Webbo aside. His mouth is half-open and I see bits of green where he’s been careless at cleaning his teeth .

We’ve thrown Webbo aside. He’s not in the way now.

The precision of that memory and its matter-of-fact comment will stir the recollections of many a man who has noticed similar details without emotion when his cobber fell beside him.

Henderson has written without sentimentality ; but as he has written truthfully, and as he is a New-Zealander, his story reflects the emotion and irrational sentiment which the New

Zealand soldier claims he is without, and which he reveals but rarely, usually after a night in the unit canteen. Although the canteen is often the place of revelation, the place of genesis is elsewhere, amid the exacting demands of the battlefield, the hopelessness of the prisoner of war camp, in the sharp, peasant-like agony for home, in the new-found knowledge of what men can do in the face of mutilation and death. These things find expression in Henderson’s pages in a way which may spell a little more than sentiment to the uninitiated ; but his story truly shows the manner in which the New Zealand soldier’s emotion floods the narrow channels in which he tries to contain it.

There are other feelings which find expression in the pages ; the incredible courage of wounded prisoners of war ; the agony of pain which only those who have experienced it can comment upon ; the rough humour which can be indicated but not expounded in print ; and there is another feeling, based deeply, more calmly and rare the sudden, swift sympathy with the hapless man in grey, a few hundred yards away across the desert. This story was told to Henderson by a South African.

After an unsuccessful German attack, outside the South African lines,T in the twilight, a Red Cross flag went up :— “ Tommy,” shouted a voice—they thought we were Imperial troops —“ Tommy, can we come out and collect our wound-ed ?

(He pronounced the word “ wound ” as we would in “ wound a. clock.”)

We gave them permission. Out came a small party of stretcher-bearers. They went about their task. • Then the same voice :—

“ Tommy, we still have more wound-ed.” Okay. Finish your.work.” Out they came again. The last few casualties were gathered up. The figures began to file' away. Then one stopped. Came " the same voice, ■ this time with a rather pathetic, .lost note about it, we thought : — “Tommy, we have all our wounded” “ Okay.” ( ■ “ Tommy—good-night.” We paused. We looked at one another. Then :— “ Good-night, Jerry,” we said. It is a feeling which transcends the bounds of nationalism and immediate duty ; the men who faced one another in the desert long more than any others for understanding with their enemies. “ Gunner Inglorious ” is not the ripe work of a practised writer ; but it is sincere, vivid, and sympathetic. It should help a lot of people to understand what is unknown to them at present.