Читать книгу The Times Great War Letters: Correspondence during the First World War - James Owen - Страница 47

“KILLED”

9 April 1915

SIR,—THERE HAVE BEEN handed in here two returned letters which more than a few weeks ago the fair friend of a soldier, an English corporal, had written, addressing them to his regiment at different places in the wish to discover his whereabouts, and in the hope that he would be alive to receive them. Outside the envelopes appears the one word, “Killed.” The intelligence is conclusive, nor is any further information vouchsafed; but if this be the regulation made of breaking the news in such cases, it is a curt and cheap one and had need to be improved upon by more consideration being shown for the feelings of the friend writing the soldier and whose letters will, of course, have been opened in the post.

Yours truly,

JOHN KEATING

ARMED MERCHANTMEN

10 April 1915

SIR,—SURELY IT WOULD be no innovation if vessels in the merchant navy to-day were armed to repel attack. When I first went to sea in ’59 it was a period when the work of the old “John Company’s” ships was being taken up by what were known as “East Indiamen,” the fine ships of “Green’s” and “Money Wigram’s,” and other shipowners. These ships all carried in the waist on the maindeck two guns of the calibre of the man-o’-war gun of that day, and on the taffrail they carried two brass swivel long-carronades to repel chasers. They also carried an arm chest with muskets and cutlasses sufficient to arm the crew, also a number of long boarding pikes, these last being kept around the mizzen-mast on the poop deck, ready for instant use, and I as midshipman was responsible for them. The Straits of Sunda and the China Seas were then infested with pirates, and ships had to protect themselves. Enemy submarines would, I think, fare badly if merchant ships to-day were similarly armed.

Your obedient servant,

C. E. MOGRIDGE HUDSON