Evening star., 1939-11-24
70 Intervening Years
Vanish as Veterans
Revive Old War
Age Stripped From
OIdish Frames and
Minds, Gibbs Finds
BY SIR PHILIP GIBBS,
Noted British War Correspondent


WITH THE BRITISH FORCES
IN FRANCE, Nov. 24.-Incredible as
it may seem, there are hundreds
perhaps thousands, of men who arc
20 years younger than they were
three months ago. That is to say
in their own subconscious, the past
20 years have been sponged out and
they are back again where they had
left off before the armistice in 1918.
I met man yesterday whom I
once met in Constantinople, and he
expressed this thought as he shook
hands with me in his Office.
1T is all ridiculous" he said with
. laugh. Here am I, a grandfather
as I have to remind myself, but 20
years have slipped away and I am
back again after seven days leave,
as it seems, in an old billet in
France like those used to have.
don't feel day older, or as if any
thing has changed. The past 20
years are just dream from which
have awakened into the old life out
here"
Restores Memory
heard of one officer who has
really wakened after a queer dream
which lasted all those years. He was
badly wounded and ll-shocked in
1915, and, after lying in a hospital
three years, could not remember a
thing of what happened during that
time. Those years were blank to
him until few weeks ago, when he
came out to France. Suddenly, in
the old, familiar scenes of this army
In France, something clicked in his
mind. He remembered everything
In that strange period of blank
forgetfulness. He had come back.
The old brigade of the last war
looks back all the time to those
former days, and conversation drifts
inevitably when two of them meet
to anecdotes of what happened on
the Somme in '16 or at Arras in IT
or up in Ypres in any old time.
Yesterday I had a talk like that,
not with an officer or a soldier, but,
curiously enough, with a woman
She was one of Queen Alexandrias S
nurses with a field ambulance, and
she took me back in memory to a
place called Corbie, on the Somme
I remember Corbie during the
battles of the Somme I remember
the tide of wounded which flowed
down there in July, 1916. This
sister, now matron, much dec
grated, was ready for 300 wounded.
One thousand arrived that day in
1916, and thousands afterWard The
surgeons were working without
respite.
Now, in this strange war which
has hardly begun on the western
front after three months, this ma
tron and her staff of sisters have
nothing to do, so far as nursing is
concerned, in a small French village
remote from any town.
"We are glad there are no casual
ties" she told me, "but this mac
tlvity is a bit trying, especially for
the younger ones. They are stranded
as though on a desert island"
BY military regulations, they are
not allowed out after o'clock at
night. In any case, there is no
society available, and so they sit
and knit or listen to the wireless
interninably. The problem of get
ting bath now and then assumed
considerable importance. 1t was
solved for a time by the discovery of
prewar bath in an old barn be-
longing to another unit. The officer,
man of tact and chivalry, invited
them to tea and posted a sentry out
side the barn while they made use of
the opportunity. Now that unit has