Yesterday I had a day off for a bath behind the lines—I hadn’t tubbed for well over a month and hadn’t been back of the guns; also I had slept in my clothes—so you may judge that warm water and soap were a necessity. Afterwards I had great fun shopping for the mess, but I didn’t manage to buy much, as the country is all eaten up. All that is beautiful in the way of landscape lies ahead, so we’re very anxious to capture it from the Hun. One looks out over his back country, so green and beautiful and untouched, and feels like an Old Testament spy having a peep at the Promised Land. Without doubt it will be ours in the ordained time. When I went out this morning it was to see a blue, blue sky, a battery pulling into action and behind it a desolated town. But the feature that caught my attention was the spring sky. I stared and stared at it and thought of when the war is ended. To-day I had to go to another town which is in process of being battered. On my way back I passed through a wood—most of the trees were levelled to the ground. In the wood I found a hawk wounded by shrapnel, and pressing close behind a fallen trunk. And I found my first spring flower—a daffodil—which I am enclosing to you. I’ve sent you many flowers, but none which carries with it more love than this little withered daffodil—my first token of spring—gathered from a fought-over woodland of France. Since writing thus far it has been raining cats and dogs, and I’ve been catching the mud, which leaks through my roof, in a soup-plate. Little things like mud and rain don’t damp our ardour, however; we press on and on to certain victory. One of our officers came back from leave to-day—he’d spent his freedom in Devon, and was full of the beauty of the spring-time there. Happy Devon! War has changed the seasons in France. Winter started in October; it’s the middle of April and winter has not yet ended. Oh, to wake up again with the splendid assurance of a summer day with nothing but beauty—such a peaceful day as we have so often spent at Kootenay. That wounded hawk, crouching among the daffodils, is a symbol—we’re like that: beasts of prey for our country’s sake, maimed in mind and spirit, and waiting till our wings grow strong again. And yet—who would be anywhere else but here so long as the war lasts? Oh, the fine clean courage of the men in the face of danger and their brave endurance in the presence of privation! It passes understanding. I saw a chap with a mortal wound the other day thinking nothing of himself—only of his pal, who was but slightly wounded. The most unendurable people act like heroes in the face of death. There’s a fundamental nobility in all men which comes to the surface when life is most despairing. III France April 19, 1917