It was “the pleasantest war he had ever attended,” so he wrote back from France. “Nice war, nice people, nice country, nice everything,” he said on the back of a postcard. To the Reverend James J. Daly he wrote, “When I next visit Campion, I’ll teach you (in addition to ‘The Boston Burglar’) an admirable song called ‘Down in the Heart of the Gas-House District.’ I sing it beautifully.” And “as a common soldier, I have the privilege of intimacy with the French peasants--and I find them edifyingly good Catholics.” But his pleasures in war he has told, as none but the author of “Trees” and “Main Street” could tell them, in his letters. What he never told must be read between the lines. When the war was over, he said, he never wanted again to go far away from Browne’s Chop House and Shanley’s Bar. Though it is firmly held in the background, there is in all that he wrote from France, it seems to me, a reflection that his life was, so to say, somewhat in disarray. And clearly enough, though proudly, too, in the few poems that he sent back he spoke his body’s pain: Upon his will he binds a radiant chain, For Freedom’s sake he is no longer free. It is his task, the slave of liberty, With his own blood to wipe away a stain. That pain may cease, he yields his flesh to pain, To banish war, he must a warrior be; He dwells in Night, eternal Dawn to see, And gladly dies, abundant life to gain. And: My shoulders ache beneath my pack (Lie easier, Cross, upon His back). I march with feet that burn and smart (Tread, Holy feet, upon my heart). Men shout at me who may not speak (They scourged Thy back and smote Thy cheek). I may not lift a hand to clear My eyes of salty drops that sear. (Then shall my fickle soul forget Thy Agony of Bloody Sweat?) My rifle hand is stiff and numb (From Thy pierced palm red rivers come). And in the closing lines of this poem certainly is given, as fully as anything can be told in this world, the answer to the question, How did the war most affect Joyce Kilmer?-- Lord, Thou didst suffer more for me Than all the hosts of land and sea. So let me render back again This millionth of Thy gift. Amen. Though he said, “I have very little chance to read contemporary poetry out here,” he did read, as he says, “what do you suppose? The ‘Oxford Book of English Verse.’” And he hoped that contemporary poetry was