Monday 25th
February 1918
2nd
Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment has a fine history in this war, of answering
the call and making any attack demanded of it. It was a regular battalion
before the war, its ranks filled with professional soldiers. By the adjutant’s
reckoning the Battalion has had 947 officers and men who have become fatalities since war broke out.
Nominal full strength for a battalion is 1,007 so nearly a full battalion of
men has died, meaning the number of pre-war professionals now serving with the
Battalion is quite small.
The adjutant
reports today that a man is on a charge for receiving a self-inflicted wound.
The incidence of this seems to be on the rise as the 7th Battalion has also had
one this month. A man will shoot himself in some non-fatal place such as the
foot, leg, arm or hand in hopes of being sent away from the fighting. The state
of a man’s mind who chooses to mutilate himself and risk death through
blood-loss rather than continue his daily round can only be imagined. Today is
the 1,301st of the war.
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