Sam Arai's "Ornamental"

Guns

Letter to the Editor IN your publication, in May, there is a par. about the removal of the “20years-old monument” in Samarai. I should like this to be published in your paper as a reply, and a criticism of both the par. and the writer.

It reads as though the trench mortar, and the 15-pounder were both captured in the last war. This was not so. The 15-pounder was of British origin.

The guns were removed on April 24, the day before Anzac Day, under in structions received from the committee of the Samarai Library Institute, and the whole town knew of their removal —almost as soon as the job was done — and, well they might, seeing that 50 boys carried them down the main street of Samarai.

The guns were never lost: therefore they could not be “subsequently found”.

The biggest lie (and this I state without fear of contradiction) was “that they had been moved for the value of the brass”.

They were removed because of their broken-down condition; and this in itself speaks volumes for the parties who were so hurt at the removal of the guns. No one seemed to know or care if the guns were there until they were removed; then they had a value far and away in excess of the value of the brass on them.

The guns, unless put into something like their original order, would have been better left in the reclamation, I am, etc.,

“Butter Before Guns.”

Samarai,

15/6/1941.