Charles Stewart Alexander, third from left, during World War I. Photo / Auckland Museum
Charles Stewart Alexander (known as Stewart Alexander), father of Helen Clow of Whangārei, found himself on the “killing fields” of northern France in June 1917. He was just 21.
A generation of young men was dying there as the British, French, and German armies stayed locked in a murderous struggle year after year.
The landscape was destroyed by shellfire and both sides dug into the ground for shelter.
In the winter the trenches filled with water - the soldiers lived in mud and died in it.
The noise of the bombardments and the suffering drove many soldiers out of their minds.
Some recovered, some didn’t. The word “shell-shocked” was coined.
Stewart Alexander may have kept a grip on his sanity partly through the letters he wrote to his cousin, Amy.
The letters may have given Amy a few nightmares, but it was probably a price she was glad to pay for being Stewart’s listening ear, and linked with his old social life in Pokuru and Hamilton.
The Advocate first published the insight into Stewart’s internal battle in 1993 after the family made the letters available for publication to commemorate Anzac Day.
Thirty years on, as shown by the following excerpt, this poignant reminder about the personal price of war remains as relevant as ever.
Stewart Alexander, the gentle, intelligent second son of a Waikato farming family with strong academic leanings, enlisted in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in 1916.
His letters to his cousin Amy begin while he is in training camp at Trentham.
He keeps it light: “We had our photo taken today: There were 30 of us and we do not look a very brilliant lot to lead men into German machine guns. In fact we might make better judges at a baby show than budding field marshals.”
Letters are the only connecting link with the outside world, he says, and he marvels at how quickly trainees fit into the “groove that is cut out for them and lose all interest in the outside world”.
He is sorry his family will be worrying about his safety but tells Amy that “it had to be, it could not be avoided. The game has got to be played out”.
“Whatever sorrow it may cause that duty has to be done...it’s not a case of honour or glory for they are not worth a rap, but a plain case of duty that must be done.”
He adds wryly: “But this is more of a lecture than a sensible letter.”
On the last day of his final leave, which began on December 19, the family learned that his older brother William, a barrister and solicitor in the civilian life, had been killed by a sniper.
Stewart Alexander’s next letter is written from sea about 10 days out from New Zealand early in 1917. The departure from Wellington had been very quiet, at 7am...no march through town and no public farewell, just 42 people on the wharf “so our departure was not very soul-stirring”.
He writes several times during the long sea voyage in “the heaving, rocking boat”, and then from France, on July 17, 1917, after several weeks training in England. The battalion had arrived on June 5.
Despite the war the French countryside is intensely cultivated and heading for a fine harvest.
As a countryman, he both appreciates its beauty and is saddened that a war is raging over it.
“As I passed through the country on the way up to the line I could not blame Germany for wanting it, for it was perfect, but when I first stood on a modern battlefield and saw the ruin and havoc and desolation caused and still being caused by German and our shells that flew overhead, some of them landing in crops, I realised the awfulness of war.”
Some of the crosses are broken and Stewart Alexander finds it “horrible” that not even the dead can lie in peace.
Nothing could withstand the terrific fire of the artillery, he says, describing a wasteland of scattered ammunition, hand grenades, old broken rifles, German equipment of all description, unexploded shells, dead Germans and half-buried bodies.
He thanks Amy for her letters, begs her to keep writing, asks after uncles, aunts, cousins, jokes about Amy’s boyfriends and occasionally writes of peaceful moments in the French countryside, where the warmth and fruitfulness of late summer make the war seem even more of an obscenity.
August 8: “I could tell you a lot but your imagination would utterly fail to picture some incidents but...when I get back Amy my one desire will be to utterly and absolutely forget many things I’ve seen here, and yet it will be impossible.
“The more I see of it the more amazed I am at human beings, civilised beings, carrying on like this, yet one cannot but help admire the endurance and cheerfulness of all amid surroundings that are sometimes beyond description.”
He writes his next letter four days after leaving ‘the line” to attend a school of musketry.
The Flanders battle is raging and heavy rain has turned conditions from bad to appalling.
“I was wet to the skin for four days,” he writes.
“The trench was wet and we were up to the knees in mud. The ground was loosened by bursting shells in places. Men were lying in the mud trying to get some sleep.
“A big offensive began before dawn...our bombardment was magnificent to watch and yet terrible.
“The roar of the guns, the sound of the shells, the brilliant flashes of light, the rattle of machine-guns, the whirr of aeroplanes overhead, the mist, the mud and wet made I will not forget in a hurry.
“Our front line was in a mess but we had to hang on in the rain and the mud and do our best to improve our position.
“That night at 11.30pm we went out into No-Man’s Land to dig a communications trench up to a position we had taken.
“We had 500 yards to dig and there were 150 of us.
“We expected Fritz to attack so we carried 120 rounds of ammunition, rifles loaded with 10 rounds and each man had three bombs.
“We had to dig within 100 yards of a German strong point manned with machine guns and you can imagine the target we would present.
“The rain was falling heavily, which was to our advantage. We got to work and we dug, truly dug for our lives. Any minute he might have seen us and turned on his machine guns. We knew that once we got down about two feet we were fairly safe. We were on a rise where the ground was hard but we worked like fury.
“Frtiz would send up a brilliant flare now and again and light up the ground for chains around and we would lie flat on the ground.
“However, Fritz had been having too bad a time that day to trouble us but every man and officer too breathed a sigh of relief when it was over.”
Between the lines, the letters betray increasing exhaustion, tension and distress at the dreadful noise and effects of hellfire.
“The shellfire is the worst part of it all...to get to work on the Hun with rifle, bayonet and bomb is not so bad but to sit crouched day and night in a wet, muddy trench and hear nothing but the scream of his shells is not pleasant and to see your comrades, that you have associated with in New Zealand, blown to pieces, dying of wounds in the mud, and to realise that it may be your turn next, is not pleasant.
“One of the boys in my section was hit in the face with a piece of shell and half his head taken off...”
He reserves his highest praise for the stretcher-bearers: “Their work is terrible and if anyone deserves medals they do.
Stewart Alexander begins to sound desperate. He gets much more specific in his descriptions.
On his way to a break from the line, it is raining heavily.
He is wet and cold, has hardly any sleep and is “was done up.”
He passes a procession of men wheeling six dead men on trolleys.
“They lay on the bloodstained trollies the rain falling on their ghastly pale upturned faces and staring eyes.
“Can you imagine my thoughts? I cannot express them.”
He writes of imagining the deck heaving beneath his feet on the homeward voyage.
The days before the war seem a different existence, he says, and he is finding it hard to imagine peace again.
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