Navidad de 1916 desde el frente
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El día 26 de diciembre de 2013, el periódico británico The Guardian publicó un extracto de diario que el capitán A.W. Howlett mantuvo durante su servicio en el frente en la I Guerra Mundial. El fragmento elegido reflejaba los pensamientos del militar el día de Navidad de 1916.
Soldados británicos heridos
From the archive, 26 December 1916: War memories – Christmas, 1914
Captain AW Howlett
The third Christmas of the war has passed, and we are impelled to hark back to the first, now seemingly so remote, and to recall lugubriously enough the expectations with which we entertained ourselves, our hopes and fears, our recollections of Noëls long past, some in our childhood days, many, as in my own case, under alien skies, and our wonderment of where the next would be.
The old town-city of X——- was no stranger to the roar of guns. Two centuries ago the round shot had screamed about the streets and the crackle of muskets resounded in its encircling country lanes. And now this year Noël had descended upon it in its fullest and most splendid robes of state, as though to emphasise the fact that it was not to be baulked by the petty machinations of men.
Snow fell all Christmas Eve, descending in large white flakes from an inexhaustible grey sky. It muffled the bells that rang out their defiant carillons in the very ear of slaughter and misery. They vibrated, as they had done for countless quiet years, from the tall belfry in the cobbled market place, and all the houses listened beneath their mantles of white. The tread of feet in the roads was dulled, and horses and guns moved like wraiths in the swirling mist.
At that time X——- itself was untouched by shot and shell, the old houses in the square with their quaint red-tiled roofs, irregular as peaks of a sierra, and their higgledy-piggledy doors and windows, were as yet intact.
The field ambulance to which I was temporarily attached marched in and established itself in a school near the outskirts of the town. The motor-ambulance was a new thing in war to me then, and it seemed strange to see the great eyes of the headlights loom through the dark and pick their way through the crunching snow to the hospital door. One after the other they came, noiseless as ghosts, the rays from their headlights making silver stabs into the gloom. Each in turn drew up at the door, and the “walking” cases, their arms, heads, and chests in red-dyed bandages, climbed out and staggered into the room. Inside, they grouped themselves around the stove, where an orderly brought them hot cocoa and tea.
There were others to whom fortune had been less kind. They came in, borne shoulder-high on stretchers, without a sound. Through the painful movements of withdrawal from the ambulance and the carriage up the two stone steps few of those blanketed gave vent even to a groan. There was the muffled kicking of feet in the snow and against the door-steps, and then that ominous shuffle into the dim room, where already the walls were lined with stricken men.
It was near midnight that I stood directing the removal of a convoy of wounded, seeing each waiting car pull up at the door, circle round in the snow, and then disappear again into the night. All were emptied, and I stood for a moment after the last had rolled away and listened to the rising and falling crackle of rifle-fire in the trenches and the thud, thud of bursting shells. Faster than ever we could deal with them these shattered men were coming in, and yet across the few acres of snow before me the busy guns were making more. Of a sudden from the belfry in the square there broke out again a wild midnight peal of bells. It was then I bethought me for the first time that it was Christmas Day.
Créditos de la fotografía: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Enlace a la noticia:
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/dec/26/archive-1916-war-memories-christmas-1914
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