Item 01: Malcolm Shore Stanley correspondence, 8 December 1916-28 October 1918 - Page 138
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 138]
these emotions particularly during the last stunt when immediately in rear of the front line & old Fritz was shelling heavily around us. The old Indian philosophers were strangely correct when they deduced that "Life is a sleeping & death an awakening". One is not afraid of death but rather of physical pain. To study the emotions was one of the reasons why I cruised over here, I wanted to know what it felt like, to be within reach of the "great reaper's scythe" teaches us deep lessons, amidst the tranquil scenes of ordinary life the soul is lost in the body, it hasn't a chance to assert itself, you don't know that you have a soul - a real soul - untill that tranquility is shattered & the body doesn't count. I wonder if you grip my crude phrases I'm smiling over them myself nevertheless strange though they seem, they will define in some degree what it feels like to be under fire, some chaps say it is "hell" & stuff like that, if they mean actual pain or that it is painful I must only add that I did not feel it that way, my body was entirely comatose & obeyed automatically some force outside my physical self.
I finished my letter pages ago, but its always the same, give me a bit of paper & a pencil & I keep going just like clockwork, if you'ld send me some decent bacca I'm sure I wouldn't be guilty of the above personally stated crime.
With love to all
Malcolm