Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

The following is part of a letter written by Harry Abbott to his sister. It was dated 3 October 1917, only 9 days before he was killed, and describes the Ypres fighting. It was published in the Great Southern Herald (Katanning, WA) 16 January 1918.

'You will have read all about this battle in your papers long ere you get this. It is one of the greatest of the whole war, and is still in progress. Never before has our artillery been so terrible and powerful. In the early hours of the morning the great bombardment opened out. Our dug-out was between the artillery and the front line, and no words can convey to you the immensity of the thing. The earth shook with a constant tremor, and you had to get your mouth close to your neighbor's ear and bellow if you wanted to speak to him. Just after dawn we got orders to go up to one of the collecting points and commence our bearing. The roar never slackened all that day nor through the following night. As we walked up, the sky was full of bright flashes, and our ears throbbed with the roar. Any of your soldier friends will tell you how these great bombardments are worked in conjunction with the infantry advances. So, I will cut that out. Our boys had gone on and on, taking all before them; and as we walked up the road, we met a stream of Hun prisoners which continued to flow all that day and most of the night. They made these men help with the stretcher bearing, and even then, our ambulance could hardly cope with the wounded. Never before have I worked so hard and so constantly. We had to have a number of relay posts, as the distances were so great. Two of the boys of our ambulance were killed early and a number wounded and shell shocked. The assisting ambulances lost men heavily. There was a road running up to the very front, so the conditions for carrying were much better than at the other part of the line where I first went up; and again, Fritz's guns were nothing like so active, so that we were nowhere nearly so shelled. But the work was a thousand times heavier; and as for terrible sights, and the dead! This last affair was positively unapproachable. You see, all the big fighting of several weeks ago had taken place over this ground, and the dead were lying about unburied. I never imagined anything like it, and I dare not even attempt to give you an outline. But the strange thing about it was this personal experience that neither I, nor any of my mates, seemed to have any capacity for being shocked. The smells, alone, made any impression on us, and that is a thing one never gets used to. I saw one old Fritz swollen up like a cask, and his face was as black as any nigger's. He was lying half in a pool of water outside one of our collecting posts. . . There are many other things too terrible to talk about, and I don't think the censor would allow the description to go through if I attempted it. Yet we were so "devilised" that we could look on it all without even a shudder. We were nearly starving, having been going for our lives all day with no time for food. On reaching one of our dressing posts with a patient, we got a tin of stewed beans and pork. We had no bread, so my mate and I poured the cold, sticky mess into our palms, and finished our repast with a tin of bully beef, eaten with our fingers. We both thought it a fine feast; but remember we were starving. At our feet, on two stretchers, were the mangled corpses of two of our men. Don't think us utterly beyond hope. There were dead all round us, and it was only one minute detail of the whole piece. The road all along was just one huge mass of traffic; troops going up in big numbers, motor lorries, prisoners, stretcher-bearers, ambulance vans, and great strings of mules loaded with ammunition, thronged the road, and, the traffic kept getting blocked. On several such occasions Fritz sent over shells and shrapnel, and these falling amongst the mass made awful havoc. On one occasion we were returning with an empty stretcher and had to push our way through such a block in the road, and had just got beyond it when a shell landed right amongst the lot. When we returned, we saw four dead mules and two dead men lying along-side the road. We have had to carry hundreds of wounded Germans, but the prisoners all helped us well, and seemed only too glad and happy to do so. Once I saw two badly wounded men - one an Australian and the other a German - walking painfully down the road with their arms around each other, and each smoking a stumpy pipe. Often, I have seen four Fritz’s carrying a stretcher down by themselves, and a wounded Australian on it. I used to think at first, I wouldn't care to be in the patient's position, but they proved, without exception, that they were to be trusted; and as for a guard over them, not one of them could have been coaxed to return to his trenches. I have had conversations with several of those who spoke English. They can nearly all speak French, so we aired our slight knowledge of that language, and between the two got some sense out of them. Several had the impudence to tell us that the war would he finished by Christmas, and that "You and me kamaredes again." But they added that England would not win. I don't think any of the rest of the world shares their opinion, however. We all think it is going to be finished very soon, though. There is no doubt about the way victory is pointing at present, and our artillery is - to my idea - our salvation. It is good to be deafened by that mighty roar of thundering guns; and although I will never be a soldier, I felt a certain mad exultation as I listened to the bellow of their mighty iron throats on that first morning of the battle. . . . '

Son of Absolom ABBOTT and Lavinia nee NORRIS of Katanning, WA