Item 04: G. O. Hawkins letters to his family, 2 January 1915-November 1917 - Page 191
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[Page 191]
To Mrs G O Hawkins
10 Norman Av
Hawksburn Road
South Yarra
Victoria
Australia
Dressing Station etc.
Dear Beatrice
There are so many pictures in my mind that it is impossible without some moments of reflection to select a patch or corner of any one of them. Indeed, even when after reflecting, I endeavour to place events in sequence the task seems one of despair, for memory is as a tangled skin of threads which the swift moving fingers of time seems to retangle day by day.
I have kept now written notes and am therefore compelled to unravel so much of that mental tangle as will at least give you an impression of those intense realities instant with man in his fearful struggle for life through the terror and shame of war.
On the roadside, where a few sheets of iron on rough timbers form a crude shelter over the entrance of a sap or a trench which leads to the security ad protection of a dug-out in mother earth, there are a number of wounded men.