War Letters to a Wife by Lt.-Col. Rowland Feilding

Author:Lt.-Col. Rowland Feilding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

June 14, 1917.

Oultersteene.

Yesterday, we marched back here—to safety—in grilling heat. What with their box respirators with extensions, steel helmets, P.H. gas helmets, rifles, ammunition, packs, etc., there is little doubt but that the infantry soldier is getting over-loaded for marching. His equipment grows as the inventions for killing grow.

Already, he must carry between 70 lbs. and 80 lbs. And after a long bout of inactivity in the trenches (I refer only to the lack of exercise), you can well understand that he is not in condition for weight-carrying. Moreover, he does not improve matters by lapping water out of his water-bottle at every halt, as is his habit if not carefully watched. However, the authorities are beginning to appreciate these difficulties, and to provide motor-lorries for carrying the packs, when such are available.

The Corps Commander (General Hamilton Gordon) met us by the way, and called me to his side while the battalion marched by. He has a very lugubrious face, and looked so melancholy that he might have lost a battle instead of having won one. He shook me by the hand and thanked me most generously for the part my “splendid battalion” (as he was good enough to call it) had played in the victory, the moral effect of which, he said, must be tremendous on the German Higher Command, as well as the rank and file.

I am sleeping and messing in a spotless cottage. The Companies are very scattered—I should think well over a mile apart, from extreme to extreme. Many of the men are bivouacked in the open, or under their ground-sheets, as the weather is beautiful. After the fighting they were in rags from the German wire, and as all identification marks had been removed prior to the raid of June 4, much patching up and sewing on has been necessary; but all have pulled themselves together wonderfully.

Did you see that poor Stephen Gwynn went to speak to his constituents at Castlegar, accompanied only by a local newspaper correspondent, and that they refused to hear him? He was mobbed, in fact, by the young bloods of the place, who stoned him. One went so far as to throw a rotten egg in his face from a range of a yard!

I venture to think that the same lad who did that foul thing would be like a lamb if we had him here;—or perhaps like a lion. I am quite sure he would not have felt even inclined to do as he did. No body of troops could be more amenable or better mannered and behaved, under all conditions, or more faithful and patient than the Irishmen in France. Yet, were they in Ireland, I feel pretty certain that some of them would be liable to emulate the hero of Gwynn’s political meeting.

They are truly an extraordinary and inexplicable race, They will do anything they are asked to do, even to the death, But they become like mules if they think they are being driven. And that is a fact which we English as a nation have not yet appreciated.

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