"Over There" with the Australians

by R. Hugh Knyvett

Tea was the last thing I was wanting, but, as others were eating, I had to put up a bluff, though I felt it would be a sinful waste if I were to be killed immediately afterward.

That first day, however, took away most of my fears, and thereafter I got to fancy I possessed a charmed life and the bullet or shell was not made that would harm me.

The most surprising thing of the life over there is the narrow escapes one has. There are scores of men who have been in almost every battle from the beginning, and are still there, and that day it seemed truly as if I walked in a zone of safety, as shells would fall in front of me and behind, and even pushed in the parapet against which I was leaning, and I did not even get shell-shock.

I sat with my "dixie" of stew and lid of tea in the open doorway of a dugout, and the whiz-bangs passed within twenty yards of me and pelted me with pieces of dirt, but nothing hard enough to break the skin struck me. We did not learn much about those trenches on this visit, and were a sad little party that went back to our companions with the news of what had befallen our comrades and the perils awaiting them. The two remaining days spent in that little village were full of foreboding. Those who had "gone west" were well loved, and but yesterday so full of the joy of life.

Nearly every one wrote home those nights, as it might be for the last time.

Under fire men are affected in different ways, but as for myself, I must admit that after that first day I felt I was not to die on the battlefield, and this gave me a confidence that many of my comrades thought was due to lack of fear. Strange to say, this feeling of security left me only on the night I was wounded, many months later. But of that in its proper place.

When we left Morbecque, the whole of the inhabitants turned out to bid us farewell. Many of the women wept, and though we had only been there a week, we felt we were leaving old friends.

We knew something of what these French people had already paid in defending that in which we were as much concerned. There was not a young man in the whole neighborhood, and it was the old grandfathers and grandmothers that worked the farms.

Our hearts had warmed to France, before we knew the lovable French people themselves, because she had borne the brunt in the first years of the war, and her soil had been ravaged, and her women so unspeakably maltreated. And it seemed that the French people took especial interest in us Australians who had come twelve thousand miles to join in this fight in defense of the world's liberty.

This war has done more to make known to each other the people of the world than any other event in history. Many of the French people had hardly heard of Australia, but hereafter they will never forget the name of the land whence came those stalwart boys who marched singing through their country; who went to war with laughter, and when out of the trenches were ever ready to give a hand with the crops.