It’s nearly dark now and I’m writing by the moonlight. One might imagine that the angels were having pillow-fights in their bedrooms by the row that’s going on in the sky. And there was a time when the occasional trolley beneath my windows used to keep me awake at night! 5 a.m. The letters came last night. You may imagine the place in which I read them—lying on a kind of coffin-shelf in a Hun dug-out with the usual buzzing of battened flies and the usual smell and snoring of an unwashed B.C. party. How good it is to receive letters; they’re the only future we have. After I’d sent the runner down to the battery I had to go forward to a Gomorrha of fallen roofs, which stands almost on the edge of No Man’s Land. Stagnant shell-holes, rank weeds, the silence of death, lay all about me, and along the horizon the Hun flares and rockets danced an impish jig of joy. When the war is ended we shall miss these nights. Strange as it sounds, we shall look back on them with wistfulness and regret. Our souls will never again bristle with the same panic of terror and daring. We shall become calm fellows, filling out our waistcoats to a contented rotundity; no one will believe that we were once the first fighting troops of the European cock-pit. We shall argue then, where to-day we strike. We shall have to preach to make men good, whereas to-day we club vice into stupor. We shall miss these nights. I glance up from my page and gaze out through the narrow slit from which I observe. I see the dear scarlet poppies shining dewy amid the yellow dandelions and wild ox-eyed daisies. I am very happy this morning. The world seems a good place. For the moment I have even given over detesting the Hun. With luck, I tell myself, I shall sit in old gardens again and read the old volumes, and laugh with the same dear people that I used to love. With luck—but when? LXIII France |July 19|, 1918 We’re all sitting round the table studying maps of the entire Western Front and prophesying the rapid downfall of the Hun. It’s too early to be optimistic, but things are going excellently and the American weight is already beginning to be felt. It may take two years to reach the Rhine, but we shall get there. Until we do get there, I don’t think we shall be content to stop. We may not all be above ground for the end, but people who are like us will be there. My batman has just returned to the guns from the wagon-lines, bringing me two letters and a post-card. They were most welcome. After reading them I went out into the moonlight to walk over to the guns, and, such is the nature of this country, though the journey was only 200 yards, I lost myself. Everything that was once a landmark is levelled flat—there’s nothing but shell-holes covered with tangled grass, barbed wire, exploded shell-cases, and graves. I can quite understand how men have wandered clean across No Man’s Land and found themselves the guests of the Hun.