Skip to main content

Full text of "TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston"

See other formats


now getting up on the fire-step to lean over beside .
some scared youngster who peers irresolutely into the
drifting smoke which hides the wire where the Ger-
mans maybe lying, ready to rush forward; now crack-
ing a joke with some grim old soldier. "Everything
Jake here?" he asks, going from post to post, always
making for the place where the din seems loudest,
and always leaving a sense of security in his wake.
Men finger their bayonets and pull themselves to-
gether when his cigarette-end glows in Che dusk, a
little planet of unquenchable devotion to duty.

Sunday, June5.1 left the Front Line at 3 o'clock this
afternoon. Two killed and eight wounded last night.
Coming down the communication-trench I passed
two men carrying a dead body slung on a pole.
"What's the weight of your pig?" asked a man who
met them, squeezing himself against the side of the
trench to let them pass. Colonial realism!

After various delays I got back to Habarcq at 11
p.m. and here I am in my quiet room again, with the
trees rustling outside and a very distinct scries of War
pictures in my head. The businesslike futility of it is
amazing. But those Canadians were holding their
sector magnificently, and gave me a fine object-lesson
in trench-organization.

June 13. Too busy to write anything lately. I seem
to be on my legs all the time. On Tuesday we did an
attack with Tanks. Sitting on the back of a Tank,
joy-riding across the wheat in afternoon sunshine, I
felt as if it were all rather fun—like the chorus of hay-
makers in the opening scene of a melodrama! But
when I see my 150 men on parade, with their brown
healthy faces, and when I watch them doing their
training exercises or marching sturdily along the
roads, I sometimes think of what may be awaiting
766