Item 06: Frank H. Molony diary, 25 March 1918-7 August 1918 - Page 181
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[Page 181]
June 27
Faces pass and pass, each calls vividly to mind days of the dead years, passes Hansen and a brown-gold tense figure flashes from the high scaffolding to the water.
Hansen is dead.
Passes McDoig, he's at the mess at Ghezireh, reading Mother Arnold as he eats, silent till Jonas comes in, then commences an argument on theology, then at Moussot there were long evenings of book talk, and at Wimereux.
All these pass in full lustiness and colour, their eyes have sight and their blood is red, none of the grey coldness of death, none of the mud and bloodied kharki, none of their bodies are gashed open, their heads are all clear of wounds. MacDougal's head was half blown away, and Nix's and Freddy Flowers: Snowy had his shoulders smashed to bloodied pulp.
And as they pass two others pass too: two who have died, Father and Harry: Harry dead ten years and Father one.
June 28
232.Last At 6 this morning – to direct attention from the R. Flank where the Tommies were making a stunt, the 11th Batt. put up a show, captured 31 prisoners 6 M.G.s and two French Mortars.
Later, by midnight.
233.
"Talk about funny!", so Ken serves it telling Tom, but it was an hour of sheer enjoyment – a forgetting of dull happenings, and an appreciation of wine and laughter and an abandoning of all to the hour, along the railway embankment, coming back to the camp from an evening spent lying deep in the grass with the S.African, Scottish at a concert to them by the 9th Divl. Concert party. We met four S.A. roysterers full of wine and song: one was a Canadian, another an Australia, both in the S.A. 4th.
Flares rising and falling arching exquisitively and breaking to splendid white stars: and the embankment's cut down trees, dark shadows by the side of silvered rails.