Item 04: G. O. Hawkins letters to his family, 2 January 1915-November 1917 - Page 208
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[Page 208]
18
If you go amongst the wounded and listen you will learn the history of a fearful night which grew and blushed from darkness into a more fearful and bloody dawn.
What the men tell are only scraps of happenings, but pieced together by a soldier who already knows the outline of events and the general plan of purpose attempted, they form a volume of chapters, complete enough, God knows.
It is impossible until I am more mast of the pen (which may never be) to describe the spectacular grandeur, and intense tragedy of such a night and the bloody merging of it into the grey of such a dawn.
To remember that men have gone through it with reason retained. To think of them hearing it, makes me merely wish to be a dog that I might sit down and howl.
There no other way to express what I feel, that you may understand.
All the time one is waiting at this dressing station there are fresh incidents occurring, many of great interest and most worth recording, but of these I cannot at present make mention of more than one; as follows
"There they are" cries someone
"Who" ask many
"The prisoners"
And so they were, more than 60 of them; great