The Greyhound by John Cooper Read Free Book Online Page A

twenty times worse.
    Alice I shall never forget it. We was supposed to have a rest away back but the order came to stand to. Our Battalion marched about five miles as we thought to relieve the 15th Battalion or 48th Highlanders. Right in an open field the Germans spotted us. Right in among us they sent big shells, what we call coal boxes, at the rate of fifty-eight a minute. We had orders to scatter and dig ourselves in which did not take us long. Shells were bursting all around us. We lost a lot of men in a short time.
    After the bombardment was over we went to a hedge and made a big ditch six feet deep. Up to our waist (in muddy water) we stayed there three days. The third day at 4:30 myself and a chum got a direct hit on our dugout burying us right up alive. Six fellows beat it to a safe place and said leave them, they’re dead. But for an officer passing by on his hands and knees we would have been left for dead.
    “What happened?” Danny asked. “How did they survive?”
    “The officer heard them yelling for help, and ordered the other men to dig them out.”
    We was took to a dressing station at night and then sent here. We got 500 German prisoners, that cheered us up some, but things are going fine on our front now. On the night of June 3 we got our dead lads and buried them but next day the shells churned them up again. One of our lads, we buried him four times.
    At one time I was lying in a big shell hole and was talking to a 48th Highlander for ten minutes before I knew he was dead. It was awful but still only for this the war would not be won. I feel that pain under my heart bad now.
    Danny reread that line. “Was he sick? Did he have a heart attack?”
    “No, he was experiencing what was called shellshock, which we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. Soldiers suffer it from the awful things they see and experience in the war. He was feeling pain both emotionally and physically.”
    I got a bag hit in the knee, sent me sprawling, lost my best chum, my rifle, but picked one up. I am beginning to feel better now.
    Today is Charlie’s birthday. I think of him on the battlefield. If I get another green envelope I will let you know more of how we are getting on. Remember me to Richard and Norton and Dan.
    I must close now for the present I remain your loving husband,
    Martin.
    Danny looked at Jack. “Who are Richard and Norton and Dan? And what’s a bag hit?”
    “Those guys were some friends of his from the neighbourhood. I don’t know what a bag hit is. I’ve tried looking it up. Maybe it’s something you can look up.”
    “It’s funny how he can go from writing about war and then saying something that sounds so normal, like he’s able to pull himself away from the war and think about his friends like they’re just around the corner.”
    “True. That’s what life is like, isn’t it. We can go through some very difficult things, some personal battles, experience awful things, and yet we try to find something normal, something ordinary , that we can attach our lives to.”
    “What happened to him after the war?”
    “He was discharged not long after that letter was written. He’d spent almost a year overseas, and eight months in actual battle. He received an honourable discharge; his medical report said he was being discharged for something called neurasthenia, which is what doctors used back then to explain a lot of symptoms that they didn’t really understand, but which came from the stress of warfare. Now they call it shellshock and post-traumatic stress disorder. He came home and tried to get back to his life, but he wouldn’t talk about the war. The horror of it was too much for him to describe again. Interesting, though, that he was able to write it down, while it was happening , eh? After the war was over, he shut it inside himself and locked it up tight.”
    THE DIARY
    Diary entry for June 3:
    So I went with Ben to Tim Hortons. I wanted to get a coffee. To hell with Mom and Dad