Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 28

It has been a day of preparation, of issuing the last few items to complete the company, of getting out the leather waistcoats and the skin coats and seeing all the final equipment is in order.^xxiii

And was ever an Army equipped like this one? My God. What we must cost the country. What taxation we must mean. How I hope we are worth it. It seems terrible, the cost. Yet, I suppose, it is really quite cheap if only it means a nail in Germany’s coffin. And anything which will help our men to stick the winter well means that. The Germans don’t like the snow, I believe.

We have just said good-bye to Grimwood, D. S. Murray and Wood.^xxiv The battalion splits up tomorrow and will not meet again for a week – and that is rather a long time these days. We have all promised to meet in our rest billets and compare experiences. We should know a great deal more than we do now by then and our meeting should be an instructive one.

Townsend’s poor brother in the 18th was killed today.^xxv He was bombing officer and was put out by a hand grenade, whilst instructing a class. It is damned hard luck, I knew him well, a keen, young chap, rather delicate but a promising officer. It has rather knocked the guts out of Towny and he looks very ill on it. Poor old boy, his ‘young brother’ was a great chap with him.^xxvi

However, Kismet. I wish he had had a chance though.