YOUTH AND DEATH.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—I think your readers may be interested to see the following extracts from a letter from a close relation of mine. The writer is only twenty-one years of age and had the usual Public School
" Many thanks for your letter, which I was jolly pleased to receive. I only wish you could find the time to write a little more often. There has been pretty terrific fighting up here lately,
as you say, but things are a bit quieter at present. not sorry; it's a change. It is very hard to express one's feelings out here. One must not feel—it is inadvisable; it makes one think, and to think, under my circumstances, is to suffer. One's thoughts in this mode of living are so hard to express, as they are so constantly changing. You must realize that one's ideals, ambitions, outlooks on life, &c., are all shattered and thus changed. Our point of view now is absolutely different on everything. We think not as a clothed and civilized being, but to a certain extent as a primitive man. You must understand that we don't live as civilization does : we are like the man of the woods. Our chief thoughts are food, drink, and killing—beyond that we have no horizon. Take, for instance, death; it is thought nothing of. If one passes dead comrades—perhaps they have died a terrible but brave death, they are sometimes not recognizable as human forms—one says, ' Poor chaps,' and passes on, and as easily they pass out of your memory. See what diffarence it is at home; one looks at death with awe, with sanctity, some even with repulsion, and think of it for days. Everything is so terrible in its difference that it is bard to write about. It is when one has a very narrow escape that one's thoughts run astray, the nearness to death, the thought that you've missed going over the great divide by a miracle. That is when you think, especially of the might have been. I will try to give you an experience I had a week ago. Fritz commenced giving it us pretty hot; at the time I was some distance away from anything in the way of dug-outs. When the first shell exploded I looked up and noticed he had caught some poor chaps unawares, and they had gone. Then two or three more came, doing no damage. I made for cover. It quietened down for ten minutes, so I hurried for my dug-out. Twenty yards off I heard a whiz and plonk, and I fell. For ten minutes 1 lay there, with my eyes glued on the protruding end of the shell, waiting for it to burst, though I knew it would blow me to pieces. I was paralysed, I suppose, as I couldn't move. Then my brain must have recovered from the shock, and I knew it was a dud. It fell about five yards from me. When realization came back I got up and ran for my dug-out. I jumped down. Just then another burst, throwing dirt and stones down our place. 11p to the time I got to safety I had thought of nothing; but when I was lying in there, safe and sound of limb, thoughts came crowding through my brain. What an escape! What if it had gone off ! Why didn't it go off? Then I got steadier, and really thought seriously. Had it gone off, and had I gone, would I have been able to face my Master? Would my life, that I had given so freely for my King and Country, have wiped out the past? Then I thought of the past. It hasn't been a bright one, as we know; but I looked it all over, not missing the worst parts of it, and I think 1 saw myself as I am, and it was nothing to be proud of. I thought of home and what my death would mean. So you understand what the nearness to our last journey makes us think of. What puzzled one most was that I felt no fear, not even the fear of death. You ask about God, Home, Work, Duty, Love, Loyalty, Fear, Joy, Anxiety, &es &e. There are times when we have no belief in God or a Divine purpose, generally when we witnessed vile and terrible sights, when there seems to be no such thing as a God; but perhaps a few minutes later we are thanking Him for our lives, which have been saved by a miracle. Home we think of as a haven of rest, where everything is peace and quiet. It doesn't seem a reality, but just a wonderful dream, something that one hopes to see certainly, but still it appears too far beyond us to exist. Work and duty we don't think about; we just carry it out to the beet of our ability. The drudgery of it is sometimes appalling, but it has to be done, so we do it automatically. We lose all feeling of love, fear, joy, and anxiety—we don't know them. We only know love with regard to those at home. Pear you must put away from you as the deadliest of all things. Joy and anxiety we know none. Spirituality does not come into the scope of our thoughts. Idleness we enjoy thoroughly when we get it. Sport we have forgotten all about; even the sport of war is now finished."
Previous page
