Gun Fodder

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Excerpt from Gun Fodder: The Diary of Four Years of War I saw the war before he did, knew the worst before he guessed at the lesser evils of it, heard the crash of shell fire, went into burning and bombarded towns, helped to carry dead and wounded, while he was training in England under foul-mouthed sergeants training to learn how to fight, and, if need be, how to die, like a little gentleman. But I from the first was only the onlooker, the recorder, and he was to be, very quickly, one of the actors in the drama, up to his neck in the real thing. His point of view was to be quite different from mine. I saw the war in the mass, in its broad aspects and movements from the front line trenches to the Base, from one end of the front to the other. I went into dirty places, but did not stay there. I went from one little corner of hell to another, but did not dwell in its narrow boundaries long enough to get its intimate details of hellishness burnt into my body and soul. He did. He had not the same broad vision of the business of war appalling in its vast ness of sacrifice and suffering, wonderful in its mass heroism but was one little ant in a particular muck-heap for along period of time, until the stench of it, the filth of it, the boredom of it, the futility of it, entered into his very being, and was part of him as he was part of it. His was the greater knowledge. He was the sufferer, the victim. Our ways lay apart for a long time. He became a ghost to me, during his long spell in Salonica, and I thought of him only as a ghost figure belonging to that other life of mine which I had known before the war that far-ofi period of peace which seemed to have gone forever. Then one day I came across him again out in Flanders in a field near Armentieres, and saw how he had hardened and grown, not only in years but in thoughtfulness and knowledge. He was a commander of men, with the power of life and death over them. He was a commander of guns with the power of death over human creatures lurking in holes in the earth, invisible creatures be yond a hedge of barbed wire and a line of trench. But he also was under the discipline of other powers with higher command than his who called to him on the telephone and told him to do things he hated to do, but had to do, things which he thought were wrong to do, but had to do, and among those other powers, disciplining his body and soul was German gun-power from that other side of the barbed-wire hedge, always a menace to him, always teasing him with the chance of death, a yard this way, a yard that, as I could see by the shell-holes round about his gun-pits, following the track of his field-path, clustering in groups outside the little white house in which he had his mess. I studied this brother of mine curiously. How did he face all the nerve-strain under which I had seen many men break? He was merry and bright (except for sudden silences and a dark look in his eyes at times). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.