Item 01: Malcolm Shore Stanley correspondence, 8 December 1916-28 October 1918 - Page 128
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[Page 128]
Harry Shore lately & think that he must have gone under at Newport. I shall be very sorry if this is so. Auntie Cath heard from one of her boys. I have not heard any further particulars, later I may.
Well Mother I've seen something of war during the past fortnight, been right up during the stunts & watched some of the actual fighting, its exciting & noisy & is not a war of men against men its rather men against artillery, its big guns all the time, the horizon at night is alight with flashes along the lines it is as light as day, lights are always being sent up some of them - signals of some kind - are rather pretty, up goes a light & down you go into the mud. Shared a hole with a dead man the other night mighty creepy.
Found a halfpenny in "No Mans Land" a few days ago, posted it to Cousin Irene for a souvenir.
We have had a fair amount of rain & these battlefields are seas of mud into which sink the mutilated forms of men. It seems as though Mother Earth is throwing around them her protecting arms & taking them back to herself, it is better so, for with the turmoil & whirl of war men cannot attend to the wounded & the dead untill at last nature herself silently performs the last ceremony hiding as it were mans awful work from the eyes of men - is it not so. As I look around & walk over our tracks it is no wonder that men are posted missing, you can't find