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Bristol Evening Post: Friday, 15 November, 1968. Article by Lt Col H. Essex. Lewis. As The Golden Jubilee week of the FIRST WORLD WAR ARMISTICE draws to a close, there remains one last question: Was it all worth it? Many of us who served in the Kaiser War still find it difficult to believe that half a century has passed since the Order- " hostilities will cease at 11.00 hours on November 11,1918. " bought an end to the fighting on the Western Front and a sense of incredulous bewilderment to those in actual combat. And now 50 years later we asked was it worth it? Was it worth the expenditure of life, of treasure, of the many unknown sacrifices, the misery and sorrow which are generation suffered during those years and in some respects is suffering still? As a Gunner who served through that war in Batteries which were involved in most of the major events on the Western Front I think that I can speak for my generation of our Army when I say that it never occurred to us to think in that way at all. Do the doctors and nurses caught up in a cholera or some other fearful epidemic where their very ministrations have exposed them to infection and death ask" Was it worth it?", the onset of fire, flood pestilence or foe-affords no time for argument. As each occurs it must be met, dealt with and if humanly possible, overcome. And as the men of the fighting services went to deal with their task they knew that the alternative were submission or defeat. They saw then as we have seen again more recently. just what either would mean to their country, their homes and their people. Slaughter Their conditions of life, mud-locked, verminous and constant exposure to death in more than one unpleasant form, have been the subject of books by clever young men then unborn. They have written them off as fools driven like sheep to the slaughter by a High Command whose foolishness they are pleased to prefix by one of the words now in common use but one considered to be confined to the soldiery. So almost every year these young men seem to return to their " Was it worth it " and we smile among ourselves and agree that we never gave it a thought. What we know and remember with pride is that with us an Order was an Order and not a basis for argument and that we carried out our Orders wherever they took us and groused as soldiers must have done since man first bore arms. those years taught us to know our fellow man for what he was and from the fire of that experience has emerged the gold of friendship. Lt Col H. Essex-Lewis Nov 15, 1968.
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