Читать книгу The Times Great War Letters: Correspondence during the First World War - James Owen - Страница 55

SIR,—I HAVE JUST returned from the front, where I have spent the last month in giving what help I could to our chaplains and troops in Northern France and Flanders. It was the most glorious month I have ever spent, and I want, if I can, to pass on to others a few of the impressions which were burnt into my soul during that time—for the days are critical.

I had never doubted that the spirit of our troops was as fine as men told us it was, but I never realized how fine it was until I had lived in it and with it. It beggars description; it is amazing. It is all the more so when you realize, as you do when you are up at the front, that this spirit is there in spite of the fact that the men who show it feel it in their bones that somehow the nation is not backing them as the nation could and should. That, I am convinced, is the feeling right through the Army in France and Flanders; and the reason for it is not far to seek.