In January 1917 Wilfred Owen described four days in the front line in a famous letter to his mother that is seen as the source for ‘Sentry’. The letter is reproduced in the Digital Poetry Archive and is full of astonishing material – http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/document/5233/4732# This is Australian EPF Lynch’s fourth day in the front line – similarly memorable,
‘…Somehow we got through the night and our fourth day breaks upon a poorly manned trench. I decide to walk the length of the trench just to keep warm, but half way along I prop still, for there protruding from the trench wall is a very white hand palm upwards. Someone, friend or foe, I do not know, is buried in the trench wall and a hand has had the earth broken away from it. A little cardboard square hangs from the hand by a piece of string. Upon the card is written ‘Gib it bacca, boss’. And the poor upturned hand is half full of cigarette bumpers. Suppose it is witty, but its not the brand of wit that appeals to me. Probably we are becoming callous, but wouldn’t you be, living among the things we experience? You get hardened to death the the dead when you see them around you all the time.
I look at the hand. It is bleached white from exposure to the weather. A delicate sensitive hand, long pointed fingers, straight and well shaped. Maybe a musician, a Fritz as the trench had lately been captured. Perhaps a little flaxen headed kid waits for its caress and there it lies protruding from its muddy grave, another trophy of the abominable war. Poor beggar!
I wander on to B Co., where there are a few chaps I know. I ask if they’ve seen the hand?
‘Yes, that’s nothing. The war must be getting on your nerves if you let little things like that upset you…’
A corporal joins the discussion. He is an elderly man, educated and cultured, every word he says carrying the hallmark of a thinker.
‘Look here lad,’ he says, ‘You give up thinking too much, or this war will get you down. It will beat you. I’ve been in it since Gallipoli and I know. The man who thinks is done. He’ll never know a moment’s peace. Don’t look too deep and above all don’t think too deeply. Try to see the funny side of everything for you will see enough that hasn’t any funny side. Take the narrow escapes we all have. Lots of men worry afterwards over them. What earthly good does it do? None at all. They become a misery to themselves and to everyone near them. Take my tip, bring yourself to treat danger as a humorous episode and not as a narrowly averted tragedy and although I can’t say that you’ll live longer, you’ll certainly live happier…’ EPF Lynch, Somme Mud, p34
