A Scholar's Letters From The Front by Stephen H. Hewett

Author:Stephen H. Hewett [Hewett, Stephen H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780649501823
Google: I5XotAEACAAJ
Publisher: Trieste Publishing Pty Limited
Published: 2017-09-15T04:56:45+00:00

To F. F. Urquhart—Company H.Q. Dug-out. April 6, ‘16.

... Why is it that I sit here like a mole, with newspaper on the table and candles for a light, only praying that I may live long enough to finish “The Gathering of the Clans“? I have often heard, and now I quite realise, that here one is mainly occupied with the thought of food and sleep: but in my own case, though we have been shelled to-day, and will be shelled again to-morrow and the day after, I have still a great hunger for reading. Though what I have to do at present even with a book about my favourite poet, or with the heaths of Dorsetshire (for I am also deep in “The Return of the Native“), I can’t for the life of me imagine... .

To Mrs. Robertson—Ap. 11. ‘16.

What interest there is in dug-out life and in ruined cities is largely the interest of novelty, —a novelty which wears off quickly and an interest which can be exhausted in a single letter. I am afraid the great drawback to life here is the monotony, the littleness, the futility, and I must add the hopelessness of any change, so far as we can see ahead. It would be interesting to know things from the inside, for no doubt there are many “things“ to be known: but, living here, one develops a kind of myopia—I think there is something of that name—by which one’s vision is confined to very little things: one lives from day to day, and is satisfied with little things: an animal life.

Besides, the things that decide the fortunes of war to-day are things that pass over one’s head—like the shells of the artillery which smash up trenches in which the poor infantryman has to hide, and which he has to patch up again when their Lordships the Gunners have finished their game.

By the way, I noticed in our first tour that our guns gave the Bosches far more than he could return: this time the contrast is even more marked, and today in particular we have had it all our own way. To judge by the noise and persistency of our fire, the Huns must be having any number and weight of explosive to spoil their arrangements. But this of course is only a single sector of the whole endless line, it may be that the Hun is “denuding his front“ and concentrating all but a bare minimum of his guns elsewhere.

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