The Cornhill Magazine (vol. XLI, no. 245 new series, November 1916)Various
History
The Cornhill Magazine (vol. XLI, no. 245 new series, November 1916)
Various
England -- Periodicals; English literature -- Periodicals; Short stories, English -- Periodicals
The mettle and temperament of the Anzac fit him peculiarly for dashing
enterprises. He is wasted on slow and dogged nibbling and unsuited for
the tame but valuable task of following up the pioneer. His psychological
attitude and mental equipment, like his physique, are those of the
race-horse: he _may_ break his heart if he is badly ridden in a race, but
he will surely break it if he is put to ploughing.
‘I’m ashamed of this jacket,’ said Donald Macleod, surveying his shabby
sleeve with disfavour. ‘I bought it off a fellow the other day when I
hadn’t a rag to my back, but I’ll get a tailored jacket, not an “issued”
one, in London.’ ‘I hear the Anzacs’ measurements are an inch every way
more than the English soldiers,’ said Phœbe proudly. ‘That’s right,’
answered the boy. ‘And an inch or so less in every way in boots,’ said
I to myself. Corporal Macleod was wearing a pair of clumsy-looking
English-made boots, and I remembered the beautifully cut boots and
gaiters I had seen worn by a couple of newly arrived Australian Tommies
in London a month or two ago. It is a fact that Australian khaki and
leather equipment is vastly superior to that produced in England.
Australian sheep and cattle have afforded their very best, and Australian
factories have put their finest work into the Anzacs’ uniforms, so that
the most ordinary private has a look of unusual smartness as long as his
workaday rig holds together.
Our Anzac had been given ten days’ furlough as soon as ever he was fit to
leave the hospital where he had been for ten weeks, and had come north
to visit his unknown Highland ‘aunties’ a few miles from Z⸺. They were
kind and hospitable, but it wasn’t ‘life,’ and Donald Macleod is very
human, bubbling with vitality, eager for experiences. The lift he had
been offered to Z⸺ that morning gave him a chance to stretch a mind weary
with answering questions about his family in Western Australia on his
last morning in Scotland, and when his fellow-travellers, two elderly
members of a School Board Committee, had been deposited at our door, he
was free to browse around alone. But we did not let him browse alone. In
our own sitting-room we gave him ‘morning tea,’ an institution dear to
Australians and easily adopted by those who visit Australia, and then
we went and sat on a great purple rock, crested with white and orange
lichens and three parts surrounded by the falling tide, and talked about
the war. Corporal Macleod was as completely free from shyness as he was
from ‘swank,’ answering our questions frankly but minimising his own
share in the world’s earthquake. ‘They’re awfully good to us in England,
but the papers insist on making us all out heroes, whereas we’re really
only good soldiers,’ was the refrain of his reminiscences. ‘And it’s the
same in France, mind you. I talk French a bit (there’s all sorts to talk
to up at Broome), but the French beat me once they begin to chat. They
were ripping to us at Dijon; the French ladies couldn’t do enough for
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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