Walk a War in My Shoes by Murray Ernest Hall

Author:Murray Ernest Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ANZAC WWI, Autobiography
Publisher: The Book Reality Experience
Published: 2018-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

19th September 1916

Dear Wal,

Your letter dated 23/7/16 to hand safely along with 8 others of about the same date. I see you are still anxious to be over here but I advise you to be in no hurry - I've been in the firing line about 5 months now and I can say it's not the game it's cracked up to be - they try to kill over here, but we are all of the same opinion i.e, if we are doomed nothing will save us, I've seen chaps come out of a bombardment that one would hardly think a mosquito could live in & then be bowled over by a chance shell - then again one of our chaps who sleeps in the same billet as I do when I'm out of the trenches was killed by a train last night & found this morning.

This chap was all through Gallipoli & been a bit old was given a job over here of keeping the billets & surroundings clean. We used to joke with him on what a sweet cop he'd got & say that he would never get killed - of course the billets are well within range of the guns, but one would be pretty stiff to get knocked. There is only one train a day on this line and it runs at night without lights, so Fritz cannot observe it - how Watty (his nick name) got killed is a puzzle - he must have either slipped or took a fit on the line or was dead drunk, at any rate even if he did not go into the firing line, it did not save him.

As I said in a previous letter if you ever come over then keep out of the Inf. get into the A.S.C or artillery, or better still learn to drive a motor. One gets sweet cops here in driving motor transports or lorries.

I saw John Robertson down the line this morning he had the corner of his dug out knocked in with a whizz-bang while he was in it, but he did not get touched.

We are giving Fritz a bit of a hurry up at present, I expect they have a few duckboard harriers in their lines. We have had some pretty solid bombardments since I last wrote but there is no advancing lately, it usually ends up in raiding Fritz's trenches and to get machine guns etc. & a few prisoners, but after a heavy shelling there is very seldom many left in the front line to tell the tale.

In this sapping we are always near his trench & perhaps under it, underground where I am now on a listening post writing this & at the same time hearing the lovely (very, I don't think) work of Fritz. It's a sensational life (do you think you would like it) never knowing when you will be blown to kingdom come, where the crows fly backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes.

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