THE YPRES TIMES
39
I may wake to find the sun streaming past a blind. The lights have gone, as my
mother's candle was shut out by a closed door.
I close my eyes as death stares down upon me, and I feel his breath upon my head,
a caress. But he did not kiss me. His footsteps are going away now.
I have killed and killed again. The machine gun, miraculously carried and
mounted, spouted fire. Black figures looming in front pitched headlong into holes,
splashing, gulping as they fell. Bombs have been tossed at other shapeless shapes
lurking and bobbing beyond they, too, have melted into the landscape, trodden
faces and bodies more deeply into the mud. Death has passed on to throw a curse
and gob upon newcomers, dance with them, kiss.
My God What weariness. No need to go on. The brain commands a halt.
I shall sleep now. Mother someone calls. My eyelids hang heavily and
refuse to lift themselves. Who will peep at me I do not know. I am tired. I must
give myself to sleep. Perhaps death will come again to seek the passion of a kiss
deferred. Who knows I do not care.
It is comforting in the trench bed. I gather its clothes about me. Sacking, an
abandoned overcoat, and the still warm pillow of a corpse.
The sun, a pale mockery of its bright self, seen through dust and smoke, illumines
the unfamiliarity of the bed chamber furnishings of bombs and ammunition boxes,
for pictures the battered skulls of men, open mouths flecked with bloody foam, blind
staring eyes. The light peeps from behind baulks of timber, above the ledge of mud.
The coverlet is grey, stained red.
No ugly dream, no nightmare this. No sudden madness. Awful ghastly sanity.
Stand to!
Warrior»55
(Hutchinson. 18/-. Published April 15th. Of all libraries.)
The author is in the front rank of military historians. He possesses, also, a keenly analytical mind
he is candid and convincing. More than this, he is a philosopher.
Warrior stands out uniquely as the portrait of man in war. There is a narrative of battle told
in that manner in which Graham Seton carried his readers breathlessly through The W Plan and
Footslogger." The story serves as the background for pages packed with interest and revelation.
From his great store of military knowledge and experience Colonel Hutchison has brought together a
superb collection of battlescapes. He clarifies strategy and tactics, and compares the history of the
battles of the ages with those fought under modern conditions. Out from the welter of war literature
we predict that this book will stand for all time as a monument to the British soldier, and to his enemy.
The warrior is crowned with courage, set with gems of sublime reflection.
The author has himself given not only the masterpiece of war literature but has added to it a
unique collection of drawings and photographs, carefully selected, which give a most vivid impression
of the various phases of war. Of these there are eighty-four, many from the German side.
Colonel Hutchison dedicates this work To all those possessed of the soldier's heart." But the
appeal of its philosophy is also to the most ardent lover of peace.
With this work the author rises to new heights as a story teller, historian and philosopher.
