Note Back to Main Text — PART II WAR LETTERS (continued 2)

I am very sad, too, at the death of A. W. Fischer.[9] He and I got our 1st XV colours together in Killick's year, and were the best of friends throughout his last two years at school. He was a smallish, active forward of the Irish type, a splendid hard worker all through the game. He and I never on any occasion got crocked, and we played in every 1st XV match for two consecutive seasons, 1912-1914. He was a shrewd fellow, too, and well read, particularly in the classics. He had a very deep, rich voice, and used to do well every time in the competition for the Anstie Memorial Reading Prize. As a soldier he would have been almost ideal, as he was a rare good leader, and a devil-may-care chap who feared nothing. It is inexpressibly sad that he should have been taken away thus. And I haven't even seen him since we parted at the end of the summer term, 1914, just before this holocaust started. We shook hands on saying "Good-bye" on the cricket ground, he proceeding towards the school buildings, and I towards the pavilion. He was to have gone to Cambridge the ensuing October, and we had been talking of his chances of a "Blue," and if we would be able to play against each other in the coming season. But what use to raise up the vanished ghosts of the past? It only makes the tragedy more heart-breaking. It is up to us to see that these lives have not been laid down in vain.