Australia at War / A Winter Record Made by Will Dyson on the Somme and at Ypres, During the Campaigns of 1916 and 1917

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ARTIST'S NOTE.

INTRODUCTION

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FACING PAGE BRINGING UP THE STEW 14

Bringing up the Stew.

Reporting at the Battery.

Dead Beat.

The Cook.

Group.

Looking for the Battalion.

The Mate.

Tunnellers under German Territory.

Coming out on the Somme.

Labour Battalion Man.

Back to the Waggon Lines after Polygon Wood.

Lightly Wounded at a Menin Road Dressing Station.

Stretcher-bearers near Martinpuich.

"Waiting for the Stew."

In the Tunnel Hill 60.

Fatalist.

Outside the Pill Box.

Coming out at Hill 60.

"Hanging About."

Down from the Ridge.

Transcriber’s Note

List of illustrations


AUSTRALIA AT WAR

A WINTER RECORD

MADE BY

WILL DYSON

ON THE SOMME AND AT YPRES

During the Campaigns of 1916 and 1917

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

G. K. CHESTERTON

CECIL PALMER & HAYWARD

Oakley House Bloomsbury Street

LONDON W.C. 1


FIRST
EDITION
:1918:
COPY-
RIGHT

CAHILL & CO., LTD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND DUBLIN.


DEDICATION

TO THE MEN OF THE A.I.F.

To you who tread that dire itinerary
Who go like pedlars down the routes of Death,
Grey in its bloody traffic, but who gaze
Inured upon its scarlet merchandise
With eyes too young to have yet wholly shed
The pity moving roundness of the child—
To you, like cave men rough-hewn of the mud,
Housed in a world made primal mud again,
With terrors of that legendary past,
Reborn to iron palpability,
Roaring upon the earth with every wind—
To you who go to do the work of wolves
Burdened like mules, and bandying with Death—
To hide the silent places of the soul—
The ribald jests that half convince the blind
It does not wholly anguish you to die—
To you who through those days upon the Somme,
About you still the odours of our bush,
I saw come down, with eyes like tired mares,
Along the jamming traffic of Mametz,
Creeping each man, detached among his kind,
Along a separate Hell of memory—
To you, and you, I dedicate these things
That have no merit save that they, for you,
Were woven with what truth there was in me
Where you went up, with Death athwart the wind
Poised like a hawk a-strike—to save the world,
Or else to succour poor old bloody Bill
Beleaguered in a shell hole on the ridge.

W. D.


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