New Zealand at the Front 1917; Pages 166 to 180

TWO years to-day since I joined the Company; two years today since I first met Bill.

But for the War I should never have known him, and I should have been the loser. No; we should never have come together, except under the conditions of Army life, for we moved along different grooves. Society would say we belonged to different circles with no point of contact.

Bill is rough-rough on the outside -and everyone who has seen him has seen his roughness ; some have seen nothing else. With me it is different, careful training and certain 'social advantages have done much to hide the roughness, and I believe there may be some who do not know that it is there-at all. Yet experience has taught me that on points of supreme importance Bill and I think alike. When I remember that had it not been for this old War I should never have been able to call Bill my cobber, I almost feel glad that . . . NVc1l, at any rate, I am glad I do know Bill.

His reputation in the Company was made long before I joined up. " The pluckiest man in the Army," they told me-" afraid of nothing." Many a man he had carried in under hail of Turkish bullets and shrapnel. Many a life he had saved in France. Already he had won, ten times over, the decoration which, however, he did not get till twelve months later.

Bill's only enemy was Bill himself. A hard case-yes ! As hard as anything in the Army. To say that be
had any philosophy of life beyond that of having a jolly-good time on every possible occasion, a fight whenever- -he deemed it necessary, and a drink as often as he could get it, seemed absolutely ridiculous. He used to say to me, " You know, Joe, there's no bad beer; it's all good but some's better than others." Yet Bill was a philosopher, and without much brain-sweat had settled and expounded questions that other philosophers and theologians -had found it hard to get men to understand.

Ethics - well, I guess - Bill didn't know what the word meant; but, all the same, he was straight-white right through. Moreover, it hurt him, when others didn't play the game. On an occasion when one of our mates had fifty francs taken from his pocket Bill was terribly put out. He was sergeant of the section at the time before he lost his stripe -and he was cut to the heart to think that one of his boys would so treat a comrade. Indeed, so keenly did he feel it that he was forced to make a speech. Bill is no trained orator - vocabulary a bit stunted - but he gets his matter home.

" Look here, chaps. This is no good. You don't want to do that sort of thing, chaps. It's - it's wrong. To think that one of my boys would do it! Well: it makes-it makes me feel like a cur."

Of course, there are times when Bill has to be put to bed. Then, having proved himself to be a friend, one may get a rare glimpse of his mind and heart. On such an occasion, after having been persuaded to be satisfied with "just one more," he was safely tucked away among the blankets.

" Give's a cigarette, Joe. Thankoo I You're good to me, Joe. I've a lot o' friends - a lot, o' friends. Some seem to try to make me better; some seem to try to make me worse. I wonder which are the real friends ? I think them that try to make me better. Some day I might change - yes, some day I might just stop dead and change right round." Gradually his voice died away, and he slept it off.

In a " stunt " few men showed up like him. He could get more out of the men than any other N.C.O. in the Company. That's why he was chosen for a stiff job at Messines. We hardly expected to see him come through it, for we knew he would throw himself right into his work in spite of the greatest danger. But he came through all right, although many of his men went down. The night the boys came out we put Bill to bed. Again we got a glimpse of his heart torn with sorrow because of his boys who had made the extreme sacrifice.

" My poor boys! My poor boys I They were good boys, yes, good boys. And they didn't mind going; no, they didn't mind going! Why should they ? Our lives are only lent to us. Why should we object to give them back when the time comes ? That's right, isn't it, Joe ? They're only lent to us. We've no right to object when the time comes".

Doubtless you think Bill is a poor exponent of his own philosophy - not altogether faithful to his trust. Perhaps you are right. But remember he was turned out of home at ten and went to sea ; spent a dozen or more years in the Navy in hard days; and has roughed it in every country on the globe, with no worldly chances beyond those of his own making.

Well ! think - well, to tell you the truth, I am afraid to think of what I might be now, if I had had only Bill's chances ; and to-day, whatever society may think of us, I am proud to call myself - Bill's Cobber!

J A Thompson

TO A WIDOW IN FLANDERS

0N such an afternoon as this, Madame, I watched white yachts glide by,
- A radiant sea, like shining silk, lay spread beneath a fairer sky
- Than Flanders knows. Perchance I lay amid green pines and drowsed all day,
- And you would sit outside your door, and watch the trams go whirling by,
- And knit, and list to neighbours' chat, and wonder of your-first-born son.
- At hand would sound a hubbub gay of Jacques and Jean-a scream-a run.
- It all was once upon a time, as in some wondrous conte de fles
- A fairy tale of long ago. Your eyes are dim. " Cest triste ! " you say.
I wonder often, while you sit and knit, if Flemish wives long dead
- Had this same patience ? Waited, too, when Flemish burghers fought and bled
- For Justice' sake ? And turned disdain of Don to fear, and died to gain
- Their country's freedom ? Were there then sad watchers o'er the newly dead,
- As now ? And did they find in war the same serenity of will
- As yours ? And faith to bide the day when news should reach them - good or ill ?
- Is there within your blood a strain of those who dared the might of Spain ?
- C'est triste Three simple little words for three long years of scourge and pain.
We both have dreams, Madame, of days to come. For nit, beneath tall trees,
- Some nook in sight of sea, with scent of freesia carried on the breeze.
- In some such spot, maybe, of you a thought may come to wake anew
- Old memories. Once more I see squat windmills, and the flat green leas
- Where merry children laugh and play, and idle hours drift away.
- And I shall pray that your dreams too, Madame, like mine, may all come true.
- That peace brought all you longed for-son, and home, and tranquil days begun.
- . . . Madame, your eyes are blurred with tears, a wrung-heart looks from out their shade,
- Yours is the burden of the years, and you can meet them - unafraid.

J. G. R.

MEMORIES

MEMORY is a peculiar thing. Around a name, a place, a person, or some other central object we group a host of experiences. Touch but the master key, and the spool of memory will unwind, and this wonderful brain of ours will reconstruct for us past scenes, revive the emotions that accompanied the part we played there-in, and place us once again upon the stage whereon for a time we played our part in some small comedy of life, or, maybe, in some tragedy where death stalked unchallenged and chose his victims from among our friends and comrades. But this reconstituted past differs in one important essential from the real experience that we passed through.

The atmosphere is different. The exhilarating effect of the wine has worn off--only the memory of it remains, the guns are silent, the voices of our comrades speak but in our imagination, and it
is but in fancy only that we trudge through the mud, or shiver wet and cold through the slow-moving hours of a cheerless night.

Memory reconstructs scenes more easily than it does emotions. More than ever is this so when the mind receives stimulus after stimulus in quick succession until, stunned and with its powers of perception deadened, it is capable of perceiving nothing save those things which demand our immediate attention.

Take our experiences at the Somme, where many of us were really under fire for the first time. Test these experiences in the light of the theory here enunciated, and then see how difficult it is-not to recount an incident, but to recreate an atmosphere.

The little incidents which I relate hereunder are trivial in themselves, but my desire is through them to revive the atmosphere of those days, which, though full of tragedy and horror, yet hold for us so much of true comradeship and humble unselfish heroism.

Our, dressing-station was tucked away under a hill in an old quarry. Immediately opposite were a couple of batteries of sixty-pounders, and the Ieft of these, a cemetery thickly strewn with rude wooden crosses, too many of which mark the last resting place of those who in life we had called friend and comrade.

Between the dressing- station and cemetery ran the road, more often than not a mere ribbon of dark brown mud, bounded by more mud.

A duck-board track leads from the road to the dug-out where the wounded receive attention. As we
at the entrance of this, that - peculiar broken step, soon to become so familiar, breaks upon our ears, and two mud-stained bearers come into view carrying a stretcher upon which lies prone the figure of a man. The stretcher is placed upon the trestles, and we come forward to make the necessary examination. There is a huge flesh wound in the thigh; the bone, too, is broken, but not so the spirit of the mud-spattered, shell-shattered lad who lies there so pale, but so plucky. Seven days, he tells us, he lay in a shell-hole with that mutilated limb, his sole provision being a few biscuits and a little rum in a derelict jar.

We do what we can for the comfort of the lad, for he's only a nineteen year old boy, a Northumbrian, and he's anxious to live for his mother's sake. A father and a brother had gone down with their ship at the Battle of Jutland, two other brothers had been killed in France,' and " I want to live," he said, " for I am the only one mother has left."

And because we, too, want him to live we do our best, dressing his wounds and making him as comfortable as possible.

He was only with us for perhaps an hour, but this pluck, the total absence of self-pity and the anxious consideration shown by that boy for his mother, sanctified our dressing room, and made us feel that it was a privilege to do our best for the poor broken chap who came our way. The last we saw of him lie was being carried to the ambulance that was to take him on the next stage of his journey, and he smiled brightly in farewell-smiled after seven days and nights in a shell-hole.

I wonder if he lived to bring comfort to his mother in her northern home ? I hope so, for his desire for life was so unselfish that he deserved to attain it.

We shared the dressing-station in conjunction with some Tommy ambulance men, who owned a Colonel. He was a fine fellow, but his aristocratic intonation caused us no small amusement. Bear this foible in mind, 0 reader, as the story unfolds.

The Colonel had a cook but no cookhouse, so he instructed two orderlies to erect some sort of shelter on a small piece of level ground under the lee of the hillside. There was not a stick of wood or sheet of iron to be found for miles around, and at last the unfortunate men were forced to report that, owing to lack of material, they were unable to carry out the order.

The Colonel was annoyed. He said:

"Oh ! you can't find any material, can't you ? Well, there are some Anzacs over there - I'll ask them if they can help me."

He called out to one of our boys, " You're Anzac, aren't you ? "

By sheer good luck he addressed Jack H------, our carpenter, the one man who could help him. Jack admitted that he was a New Zealander.

" Well, look here, my good fellow. I wish you'd help me. I want a bit of a shelter erected for my cook; my men say they can't find any material. Do you think you could do the job for me ? "

Jack replied that he would do his best, and in about an hour a very creditable little erection of timber, roofing iron, and sandbags was completed.

The Colonel was delighted. Calling to him the men he bad ordered to do the job, he said :

"There! I thought the Anzacs would manage it for me. Orderly, bring me a bottle of rum."

The rum arrived, and the orderly inquired if he should draw the cork.

" Damn it all, yes! " was the reply. "What in the devil's the good of a bottle of rum to an Anzac if the cork's not drawn ? " Then, turning to some of his own men who had gathered round, he continued: " These Anzacs are fine fellows. They're devils to swear, they're devils to drink, but they're devils to work also."

Had lie only known he might have added another tribute. The material for the cookhouse had been
from off his own dug-out.

* * *

One drab September day I stood on the hillside near the dressing station, and espied a little procession wending its way toward me. In the lead walked a khaki-clad padre, with him a piper playing a lament upon his pipes. Immediately behind them came six men of a highland regiment, bearing on their shoulders a rough coffin, in which lay the body of their officer, who had been killed in action the previous day. Behind these, again, walking with bowed heads and reverent mien, came some twenty Highlanders, wending their way to the little cemetery opposite to pay the last tribute to their respected dead.

The procession filed slowly through the gateway, and the men grouped themselves around a pathetically new dug grave. In a clear, far-carrying voice the padre read the simple service of the Presbyterian Church ; then, while the piper played a lament that winged my fancy to the heather-clad hills of Scotland, each mourner in his turn stepped to the head of the grave, saluted with becoming dignity, and passed on.

Near by were two batteries of sixty pounders. Scarcely had the service concluded, and even while the shrill lament of the pipes still rent the air like Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, these monsters spoke, and hurled forth thunderbolts at their far distant target. It was a very fitting salute to the dead Highland gentleman who had contributed his life to the cause of Righteousness.

R. G. H.