Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 27

Well, they have come at last, the definite orders to move. And, strangely enough, they have brought no excitement with them. Interest is the chief note, interest in what the work will be really like, how we shall manage and how much we shall learn. This eagerness to learn is the predominant note among the officers who are one and all keen to get au fait with their job.

The idea is a splendid one. The battalion splits up into four companies each of which is attached to a regular battalion for a week in the fire trenches. The main object being instruction [in trench warfare] – an object which suits us down to the ground and with which we are in the most hearty agreement.^xx

I wrote you a long letter tonight telling you all about it, but the post has suddenly ceased and you will not therefore hear from me till we are about half-way through our excursion. On the whole I am glad. You would, I know, only worry did you know I was under fire.

Tonight I censored a letter from one of my sergeants.^xxi He is distinctly a character. A Don of Balliol, a lecturer at the London Varsity, he enlisted as a Tommy. It is no doubt fine to think of but it is also ‘an economical waste’, as Earles^xxii used to say. Months ago I tried to get him to take a commission but he had views of his own and I doubt not but that he is happy where he is. He talks French fluently and is already great friends with the villagers. In his letter he told how sad the women are here. All their men are gone, they are within sound of the guns and all they can do is work on and wait. It is dreadfully sad for the women, this war and I think it is our realisation of this and of your quiet heroism that makes us love you as we do. At least I know I feel like that about you, my own.

For us the work and the excitement. For you the waiting and suspense. I know well which must be the easier to bear.

The guns are quiet tonight. It is the first time for days. There has been some little festival in the village and two weddings and the people have been indulging in a minor Morris Dance. They are simple and they are kind – when they know you, and I hope with all my heart the guns may never come nearer Raineville than they are now. Rather I trust in heaven that their war may go forward to the German border and over, that their thundering may reverberate through the streets of Rhineland towns and villages and cause the startled light of fear to leap up in the eyes of fatuous burghers that these may be repaid in kind for all the suffering their horrid country has brought to this ‘fair’ France and her fairer sister, our England.