Forgetting Enmity
“Hearing moans as I went along the trench, I looked into a shelter or hole dug in the side and found a young German. He could not move, as his legs were broken. He begged me to get him some water, so I hunted round and found a flask of cold coffee, which I held to his lips. He kept saying ‘Danke, Kamerad, danke, danke.’ However much you may hate the Germans when you are fighting them, you can only feel pity for them when you see them lying helpless and wounded on the ground. I saw this man afterward on his way to the dressing station. About ten yards further on was another German, minus a leg. He, too, craved water, but I could get him none, though I looked everywhere. Our men were very good to the German wounded. In fact, kindness and compassion for the wounded, our own and the enemy’s, is about the only decent thing I have seen in war. It is not at all uncommon to see a British and German soldier side by side in the same shell hole nursing each other as best they can and placidly smoking cigarettes. A poor wounded German who hobbled into our trench in the morning, his face badly mutilated by a bullet—he whimpered and moaned as piteously as a child—was bound up by one of our officers, who took off his coat and set to work in earnest. Another German, whose legs were hit, was carried in by our men and put into a shell hole for safety, where he lay awaiting the stretcher bearers when we left. It is with a sense of pride that I can write this of our soldiers.
“There was a counter-attack on our left in the morning, and for a few minutes the machine guns were very active, but the Germans were beaten off. At last we were relieved, and made our way back, behind Guillemont, to be taken out of the line. We spent one night in a camp and next day came on here. I am writing this in a picturesque French village. You can see green fields and trees and stacks of corn and cattle when you look through the window. Here, at all events, ‘grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front’. I am not alone in hoping that we shall not have to go back to that hellish place.
“Well, now, that’s the story of the great Irish charge at Ginchy, so far as I can tell it. I suppose by this time the great event has been forgotten by the English public. But it will never be forgotten by those who took part in it, for it is an event we shall remember with pride to the end of our days.
“Need I tell you how proud we officers and men are of the Royal Irish Fusiliers who played as big a part as any in the storming of that stronghold, and who went into action shouting their old battle cry of ‘Faugh-a-Ballagh’—‘Clear the way!’”
The estimated total war bill of the United States is 30 billions, which is equal to approximately $330 apiece for every man, woman and child in this country. The sum includes the 10 billions loaned to the Allies, and is estimated on the appropriations made by the first and second sessions of the 65th Congress, including the appropriations that were authorized, but were not expected to be expended before the fiscal year 1919.