I turned to the left then and made for number one group, Bell, my orderly, following a pace or two behind. A cloud came over the face of the moon, the night became suddenly dark, and the next moment I had stumbled and almost fallen over what I imagined for a second to be a stray sand-bag. It was not a sand-bag, God knows it was not! The moon reappeared and I saw it was you, Dick, lying on your side, with your legs outstretched. I bent down when I realised that it was a body, turned you over on your back and with Bell’s assistance ripped open your Burberry, your tunic and your vest. A bullet had gone straight through your heart, there was a little spot of congealed blood on your breast, and—you had died—well, as suddenly and as easily as you deserved to do, Dick. On your face was a smile. I am not good at analysing feelings and there is no purpose in trying to analyse mine. Indeed, I cannot remember exactly what my sensations were. I had no sorrow for you, as I have never had sorrow for those killed in this war. I do not suppose two men have ever been closer friends than you and I, yet I was not even sorry for myself. I remember that I turned to Bell and said half angrily: ‘I told him to take an orderly, I was always telling him to take an orderly!’ I heard Bell’s irrelevant reply, ‘Damn them Bosches, sir.’ (The men in your platoon had an affection for you, Dick.) Then together we raised you, your wet clothes frozen, your hair matted with mud, and picking up your cap and rifle from the ground, carried you slowly back to the breastwork line, and there wakened a couple of stretcher bearers. Oh! I’m sick of this war, Dick, dully, angrily sick of it. This world can’t be anything, I know, otherwise fellows like you would be kept in it. For a week or two the fighting is all right; it is amazing, and wonderful and elemental. Then as month after month goes by, when there is nothing in your brain but making your line stronger, when you think in sand-bags and machine guns and barbed wire and bombs, when the stray shot or the casual shell kills or lacerates some sergeant or corporal whom you have had since his recruit days in your company, given C.B. to, spoken to like a father, recommended step by step for promotion and at length grown to trust and rely on—then it begins to show its beastliness and you loathe it with a prolonged and fervent intensity.