Mail Day
Mail Day
“The mail’s in!” The glad tidings are tossed from lip to lip and shouted down the lines, outstripping, and for the time suppressing, the current furphies, “Furlough to Australia,” “Peace Negotiations,” “A big Stunt,” and similar creations of the idle imaginative mind.
“There’s a mail in!”—A magic wand has been waved above the troops by an unseen hand and weariness and even sleep are banished from the war-worn soldiers. Even the sick are interested, and their eyes light up with an eager look of expectancy.
“There’s a mail in!” The chronic grouser forgets to grouse, the lead swinger lays aside the lead and, for the time, his petty pains, and they join the eager throng around the perspiring orderlies who are struggling with the jumbled mass of letters, papers and parcels, bringing chaos to order, sorting mail into squadrons and then into troops, ere it can be distributed.
What a study are the faces of that watching throng; what a joyous gleam leaps into the sleep-laden eyes of a tired youngster who has caught a glimpse of a letter addressed in the well-known hand of the mother who waits at home.
There is a youth just from school, who has not yet tasted the mad joy of battle, of a ding-dong mix up, when death shrieks through the air missing one by inches, by hairbreadths. Here, too, is the war-hardened warrior, who knew Anzac before the Suvla advance, who has met, fought and beaten the Turk from Romani to Jericho, the hero of a hundred fights, of scraps fought out on lonely patrol, that the world knows naught of, though to the individual they are more fraught with peril than a big battle.
To soldiers mail day is a day of bliss. Recruit or warrior, their faces portray the emotions that are surging through their breasts. Their eyesgrow bright with eagerness as they watch the pile of mail assume shape and order under the deft hands of the postal orderlies.
Men moving out on outpost or patrol shout to their mates, “Get my mail, Jack,” “Get mine,” and ride off casting longing eyes at that waiting crowd; with joyful hearts they move out into the night, to outwit the enemy or return no more. But what care they—for it is mail day!
Before dawn, outpost and patrol return, weary and with sleep-laden eyes. They off-saddle and picket their horses, and dash into the bivvies for their mail. Matches are struck surreptitiously, candles are lighted and hidden by blankets, for lights are forbidden when in touch with the enemy; and thus are the letters eagerly read. Often Billjim falls asleep from sheer exhaustion, the last letter still clutched in his hand, and dreams of his Australian home; the fragrance of gum and wattle blossom are wafted to him from overseas on the cool night breeze.
Mail day, the most joyous and most tragic in a soldier’s life, brings messages of love and trust from dear ones, messages of faith and praise from friends; and at times news that is sorrow-laden.
“WIL COX.”
“WIL COX.”
“WIL COX.”
“WIL COX.”