The Cook County herald. [volume] (Grand Marais, Minn.) 1893-1909, 1900-08-04
ETA 4 !! R|D.SHIP o W Ar.

HARDSHIP 9 W AR.
sENiDl1lJRANcE oF SOLDIERS IN
3 Il E FEEL
War Correspondent Describes Them az
Human Fighting Machines. who Are
ms Happy on Quarter Rations as on
Whole. 55s@y95s5 $$s
a graphic tlescripti sof the rigors
Of camp life and the hardshipss endured
blythe British soldiers in the war il
south s'tl1 81 Africa is given in the current
issue ISIS OF the London Daily Mail by
Julian Ralph He prefaces his CORE
spo1ndence by a humorous account Of
his own mishaps. He says: Battered
externally, disordered inside, unable
70 digest food for weeks. nursing
bruises and ailments a half dozen at
once. once, I look upon this war as having
l1ll-repaid me. for the kindly and 1nbi-
liant tone in which / have dealt with
1T. Sz:@s. Z 5szzizs - y
iSss And oh. how sick of it I am how
deadly, unutterably sick 1 am Of it!
The long months of sand diet and
hard faring Under Methuen took from
me a stomach which an ostrich would
have envied and exchanged for it a
secondhand; worn-out apparatus
which turns upside down at the ap-
proach of any food except diluted milk.
A piece Of Boer shell which hit me
on the chest made me faint and weary
for many days, and then a novel meth
Oh OF alighting from Cape cart into
a trench, with the cart on ton Of ME.
left me one-legged for five weeks; after
which found myself with a low-class.
no-account limb in which I mad no
confidence. Upon my recovering this
inferior and make-shift other leg. nv
horse shot me into a wire fence, which
tore both arms into shreds, painted
one thigh like an omelet and the other
l1ko South African sunset and left
ne an internal fracture which / mist
Keep as a perpetual souvenir Of what
W. are all beginning to speak or as
tine bore war - y
Try to imagine the feelings of a
man fashioned in the image of his
creator who finds himself gradually
changing into an exhibit for a medical
museum and you begin 10 obtain
glimpse of the fatigue with which !.
now view this war;
But though battered and bruised.
Mr.. Ralph is 'still in the ring for he
adds to the diagnosis of his own case
one of the most interesting studies of
the tributes to Tommy Atkins in the
held that was ever penned by Amer
lean or other correspondent. Describ-
ing his trip from B1oemfontein to
healthier Naauwpoort, he writes:
What did we see? Nothing but an
illi1nitable, spongy, stodgey bog. with
driving cold rain beating upon it,
And living upon it without tents were
soldiers-soldiers everywhere. Mental
" asked forgiveness for having, even
during one moment, thought Of my
own discomforts and worries. Some of
those men had been guarding the
railway a whole month. They had be-
gun the task Immediately at the end
OF the awful strain of the field mar
shals progress from Graspan to
Bloemfontein, when they marched as
no Europeans ever marched before,
and were starved as none ever should
be again. 49,, s-...-- ~ s.~~. ~.
Now the bitterly cold, driving rains.
had come and turned the veldt into
marsh. And here I found them like
so many half-drowned rats, wet as
the veldt beneath them, wet as the air
around them, shivering, playing drum
tunes with their, teeth, coughing, walk
ing and stamping to keep warm-do-
ing everything except complaining.
7. And these were Guards, mind you
the first few thousands spread ov er a
the first few miles, Grenadiers, Scots,
Coldstreams! London pets you have
often called them; tin soldiers and
you have laughed at them in your
London homes and newspapers. Well,
they did not complain at that, and
they are not complaining at this. The
officers were glad to take anything we
could give them to read, and the men
did not spurn small offerings of to-
bacco, but it is only just to say that
none of them asked for anything.
g Tommy is the equeerest human I
ever. saw-the most i inexplicable.
When his rations are down to two bis
cults in three days you may hear the
fact mentioned in an incidental way
by a man here and there, but no one
growls about it,@.as sailors would do.
When Tommy is marched in suffocat-
ing heat until his mates begin to drop
out Of the ranks or fall on their faces
from the ranks q play Of repartee will
spring up among them and comical5
ideas and phrases will fly from line to
line. : 5ifa5& as5s#l5s h rs