The day after that I went forward to do my 24-hour spell at the observing station. When I saw my first Hun after so long an absence, I felt more like hugging him than trying to kill him. Of course I had to do the latter, and had a very nice little strafe. I wrote you a fine long letter up there and somehow lost it. So this is my second attempt. Don’t get nervous about me. Everything is quite all right with us and I’m having a real holiday after my feverish literary spasms. But a lot of familiar faces are absent. XXXIX France April 22, 1918 You would hardly believe our peaceful state of mind unless you could drop in on us for an hour. You, in America, are evidently very worked up about us, and picture us as in desperate conditions. Don’t worry, we’ve got our tails up and are happy as sand-boys. There’s nothing of the grimly set faces about our attitude such as you imagine. We’re too confident to be grim; war is actually, from our point of view, a gigantic lark. It must sound silly to you, I know, but I love to hear the screaming of the shells in the darkness and the baying of the guns. It’s like a pack of wolves being chased through the night by bloodhounds. I hadn’t been back two days before they got the rumour at the wagon-lines that I was wounded—a little previous, I thought it. I call that wishing a blighty on me. I’ve just come back from a trip across one of our old battlefields. We’re in the Hun support-trenches, behind us is his Front line, then No Man’s Land with its craters and graves, and behind that the Front line from which we jumped off. You can trace everything plainly and follow the entire attack by the broken wire and blown-in dug-outs. We’re still filled with amused contempt for the Hun on our part of the Front.