Vosges
Saturday July 24th 1915
My Dear Mother
Yrs. of July 19th …came today …
Enclosed 2 things may interest you, one re Mrs Smith I cut out of a Sydney paper sent to me & other out of this mornings communiqué which will explain why we have been so busy & going day & night all the week, I don’t know how much longer it is going on, but we can’t keep it up much more. Many of us nearly dropping off the cars for want of sleep, dust too has been very bad & ones eyes get in such a state. I was given a night in bed for a change last night which was most acceptable.
Two days ago 3 or 4 of us who happened to be out over pass saw a big fight from hill in wood looking across valley on bare hills opposite. Fearful shelling of trenches & then Germans climbing out & running up hill to a wood & then the 75 guns firing shrapnel into them. It was a particularly clear day & could follow it all so well.
We saw another night a fight on a famous Kopf here, sort of hill 60 of these parts, wonderful at night. We were up a high hill above valley looking down over German positions & where we were was just behind French trenches but not near the Kopf in question. Guns going off in every unexpected spot & the view of flashes from the hand grenades & bombs they throw at one another is like fireworks, extraordinary sight. |
The want of sleep, continual guns firing off close to you in dark when going along road at night & the wounded everywhere waiting to be brought in on ambulances is all rather weird & gets a bit on ones nerves. The talk of nothing else & various fellows describing some ghastly wounded man he has brought down, one gets, we all are I think rather fed up of it all & I shan’t be sorry today when today fortnight comes …
I certainly have no intention at present of returning here for more than 3 months, it is a beastly cold place in Winter & I shall have had more than enough of this job by 1st Dec.if not long before. One could always come back to it in Feb or March if war is still on then, but hope to be elsewhere & war over by then …
Cecil Starkie [??] had a narrow shave going over the pass two evenings ago, shell burst close to him & broke the front glass of the car.
Several of us have had shells pretty close lately, they shell the road we use to try & stop the staff & ammunition going down to the troops & also searching for batteries in hills around. Russians seem in not a very good way at moment & Warsaw in balance! Nothing seems ever to happen in Flanders & I don’t suppose we shall ever advance in those parts. How sick everyone must be of it all, Germans included ...
Best love
Yr affect. son
Arthur |
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