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[Page 24]
their way. They must have read my face when they told me by word of mouth, and just left it at that. Oh, how hopeless I feel. I've always looked forward more than anything else to seeing him over here. Fourteenth of August, why before I left Australia. If you could only know how much I looked forward to meeting the 13th Battalion "Somewhere in France" , and seeking him out. When I learnt of the heavy fighting that the Anzacs had been engaged in, on my arrival in England, I thought that he would have indeed been lucky to have escaped without a wound, but the other never dawned on me. One great comfort comes to me over here on my own, and that is, as a soldier, I cannot but recognise my dear brother died a death deserving of the greatest of honor and respect from those of us still above the sod.
But I dare not look in the retrospect of those happy times together, Its just too awful. There is just a big blank in front of me. You know, we all look forward to the great homecoming, made a great exhaltation by the feeling of participating in the greatest and most glorious of martial victories, and to the meeting of our relations in our happy homes, who, separated from us, have each toiled towards the great end. This I have looked forward to as probably the greatest moment of my life. But its all blotted out, and I feel as if I am robbed of a just reward. I feel like a criminal serving a long and tedious sentence, and as if I will wend my way home shamefaced and by back roads. Dear old Alan, how he played the game, only to go the way of the glorious, when the Anzacs had done their second glorious feat, captured Posieres village, in the shocking fighting which followed. He was lucky to be picked up by the AMC, and taken to the Casualty Clearing Station, where he will have had a decent burial, in a grave marked by a pioneer's rough cross.
But this is not the place to mourn a brother, words are inadequate. I just think of him and realise I'm too late. What a pathos, a rending, tearing, unforgiving sin, to be too late. A soldier should never be too late, and yet I have arrived here too late!