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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Letters to Helen, by Keith Henderson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Letters to Helen
+       Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front
+
+Author: Keith Henderson
+
+Illustrator: Keith Henderson
+
+Release Date: August 31, 2005 [EBook #16626]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS TO HELEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto), Suzanne Lybarger,
+Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS TO HELEN
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CRUCIFIX CORNER
+Between MONTAUBAN & HIGH WOOD
+One of the hands was shot away, and the figure hangs there suspended
+from the other.]
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS TO HELEN
+
+Impressions of an Artist
+on the Western Front
+
+By KEITH HENDERSON
+
+Illustrated
+
+LONDON
+CHATTO & WINDUS
+
+MCMXVII
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+These letters were never intended for publication.
+
+But when the pictures were brought back from France it was suggested
+that they should be reproduced, and a book evolved.
+
+Then a certain person (who shall be nameless) conceived the dastardly
+idea of exposing private correspondence to the public eye. He proved
+wilful in the matter, and this book came into the world.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+CRUCIFIX CORNER                         _Frontispiece_
+A CONFERENCE IN THE CHATEAU           _To face page_ 6
+BAILLEUL                                            10
+LE MONT DES CATS                                    18
+FRICOURT CEMETERY                                   32
+TRENCHES BETWEEN FRICOURT AND LA BOISELLE           48
+GIRD TRENCH                                         54
+A HOUSE IN GEUDECOURT                               60
+A WOUNDED TANK                                      66
+EXPLOSION OF AN AMMUNITION DUMP                     78
+THE BUTTE DE WARLENCOURT                            92
+PERONNE                                            106
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS TO HELEN
+
+
+_June 6, 1916._
+
+Well, here we are in the slowest train that ever limped, and I've been
+to sleep for seven hours. The first good sleep since leaving England.
+And now, as we've got twenty-eight hours to go still, there's time to
+write a letter. The last three days' postcards have been scrappy and
+unintelligible, but we departed without warning and with the most
+Sherlock Holmes secrecy. Not a word about which ports we were sailing
+from or to.
+
+However, I'll tell you what I can without disclosing any names of
+places.
+
+After moving off at midnight from among the Hampshire pine-trees, we
+eventually reached our port of departure. Great fun detraining the
+horses and getting them on board. The men were in the highest spirits.
+But how disgusting those cold rank smells of a dock are.
+
+We sailed the following evening. Hideously rough, and it took seventeen
+and a half hours. The men very quiet indeed and packed like sardines.
+It was wonderful to think of all those eager souls in all those ships
+making for France together over the black deep water. Some had gone
+before, and some came after. But the majority went over that night. I
+felt decidedly ill. And it was nervous work going round seeing after the
+horses and men when a "crisis" might have occurred at any moment!
+Luckily, however, dignity was preserved. Land at last "hove in sight" as
+the grey morning grew paler and clearer. What busy-looking quays! More
+clatter of disembarkation. No time to think or look about.
+
+Then, all being ready, we mounted and trekked off to a so-called "rest
+camp" near the town, most uneasy and hectic. But food late that evening
+restored our hilarity. A few hours' sleep and we moved off once more
+into the night, the horses' feet sounding loud and harsh on the unending
+French cobbles. By 8 a.m. we were all packed into this train. Now we are
+passing by lovely, almost English, wooded hills. Here a well-known town
+with its cathedral looks most enticing. I long to explore. Such singing
+from the men's carriages! Being farmers mostly, they are interested in
+the unhedged fields and the acres of cloches. They go into hysterics of
+laughter when the French people assail them with smiles, broken
+English-French, and long loaves of bread. They think the long loaves
+_very_ humorous! There are Y.M.C.A. canteens at most stations, so we are
+well fed. The horses are miserable, of course. They were unhappy on
+board ship. A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to. And
+now they are wretched in their trucks, Rinaldo and Swallow are, of
+course, terrified, while Jezebel, having rapidly thought out the
+situation, takes it all very quietly. She has just eaten an enormous
+lunch. Poor Rinaldo wouldn't touch his, and Swallow only ate a very
+little.
+
+[Sidenote: FRANCE AT LAST]
+
+In this carriage Jorrocks is snoring like thunder. Edward is eating
+chocolate. Sir John is trying to plough through one of "these Frenchy
+newspapers--damned nonsense, you know! they don't know what it all means
+themselves." And Julian is scrutinizing a map of our area.
+
+Everyone is so glad to be going up right into it now. That pottering
+about at home was most irritating. Just spit and polish, spit and polish
+all the time since August, 1914.
+
+We are all getting cramp, and have to stand up occasionally. Toby has
+smoked his fourteenth pipe.
+
+Oh, look! What a lovely rainbow! Treble. And under it a village with an
+estaminet, a dozen slate-roofed houses, and a very new château, hideous
+with scarlet bricks and chocolate draw-bridge and pepper-pot turrets.
+Poplars and more poplars. Still we rumble along through symmetrical
+France.
+
+
+_June 7._
+
+We are in one of the most lovely old French châteaux I have ever
+imagined. Half château, half farm, fifteen miles behind the line. We
+remain here for two or three days. Arrived late last night, tired and
+grubby. But, O ye gods, when dawn began to reveal this old courtyard
+with its hens and chickens and pigeons! On one side the old house with
+its faded shutters. On the other side the old gateway with a square
+tower and a pigeon-cote above. Along the other sides old barns. The
+country round we have hardly seen, but it looks exquisite. There are
+several most attractive foals in a field close by.
+
+And inside the château funny old-fashioned things--old beds with frowsty
+canopies, and old wall-papers with large designs in ferns and
+cornucopias. Imitation marble in the hall. Gilded tassels. Alas! my kit
+has not yet arrived. It's awful. And the anxiety to draw these things is
+feverish. We go so soon.
+
+When you look out of the rooms into the courtyard, you see our waggons
+and draft-horses, and the men eating bully-beef like wolves. Some of
+them (including Sergeant Cart) are shaving and washing stripped to the
+waist. The others just tear at the bread and beef and munch without
+speaking. Corporal Nutley and Corporal Field are pointing with their
+tea-mugs to the old gateway and the ducks and things. They all evidently
+love it. They sleep in the barns amongst the hay. The sun is warm and
+sleepy.
+
+
+_June 8._
+
+[Sidenote: THE CHATEAU-FARM]
+
+Still at this lovely château-farm, and Life seems to have gone into a
+trance. I wake up and look out into the courtyard and the sunlight, on
+geese, Muscovy ducks, pigs, and pigeons, and it all feels like a
+half-forgotten story. There are traces of the Huns, but all that seems
+unreal. You hear the boom! boom! boom! of the guns all day, and more so
+at night; but nothing can disturb the extraordinary remote peace of this
+château. The very stones in the courtyard look more friendly and more
+countrified than ordinary stones, as if some ancient fairy lived here.
+There's no doubt at all that the men feel it. Several of them have said
+how they like the place. They think it's a little bit like ----shire. I
+think I know what they mean.
+
+After the war perhaps we may visit the place together: I should love
+showing it to you. I'm not at all sure that it's really very beautiful.
+The architecture isn't good when you consider it. But somehow....
+
+
+_June 10._
+
+The same château. We are living a simple and brainless life. No
+field-days, of course, and for this relief much thanks. We don't know in
+the least what is happening. Troops come and troops go, and guns go by
+during the night, and Red Cross waggons go hither and thither, and the
+old turkey gobbles.
+
+Yesterday I was out with my troop, quite uninteresting. But what do you
+think? Something exploded not 100 yards away from Rinaldo. I was much
+farther off, dismounted. He didn't turn a hair, but only looked round
+and watched the smoke. Whereas, as you know, a little bit of paper blown
+across the road sends him into paroxysms of terror.
+
+
+[Illustration: A CONFERENCE IN THE CHATEAU DE FEBVIN-PALFART
+There are many of these old chateaux-farms in Northern France. The beds
+are under great frowsy canopies and all the curtains are looped up with
+heavy tassels.]
+
+
+_June 11._
+
+I went into an old church in a large town ten miles from here to-day
+with Sergeant Hodge. There were the usual tinsel things and red baize
+and sham flowers. Sergeant Hodge much impressed. He said after we
+emerged: "You know, sir, it's very fine indeed. It puts me in mind of
+a bazaar." This was in all good faith, and was intended as a great
+compliment to the church! We are having lots of rain, which is bad for
+the horses, who are picketed in the open. And thunder. It's often
+extremely difficult to tell whether, when the thunder is far away, it is
+thunder or guns. Quite a novel experience, and quite pleasant after the
+long period of make-believe in England. Discipline. So salutary and so
+irksome. Now for the battle. I own I long to get into the thick of it
+soon. We see infantry returning and going up, and we feel sick, somehow,
+to be still safe.
+
+This country is very charming, but a bit monotonous. Every road and
+every field exactly like every other.
+
+
+_June 13._
+
+[Sidenote: A SERVICE FOR KITCHENER]
+
+A service to-day for Kitchener. And we had to ride fifteen miles there
+in pouring rain. Then we stood in deep mud for about an hour, the rain
+gradually trickling down our necks.
+
+To-day delicious rumours of a German defeat at Verdun. Lots of
+prisoners, including the Crown Prince!
+
+Goodness me, such rain. Jezebel bit Swallow above the eye merely to show
+what her feelings were. He now has one eye enormously swollen and
+almost closed up. It is dressed with iodine, so he looks most
+remarkable. His beauty much damaged. But it will only be temporary.
+
+Hunt tells me that Swallow is so frightened of Jezebel he daren't lie
+down at night. But then, Hunt thinks Jezebel a sort of Bucephalus, and
+the more horses she kicks or bites the more pride he takes in her. He
+has no love for Swallow, unfortunately.
+
+There's a distant cannonade going on to-day. We all eye each other.
+
+
+_June 17._
+
+In the small-hours of to-night we leave this wonderful place. Why we
+were ever sent here or why moved away is one of those mysteries only
+known to a few staff officials.
+
+But how we have loved it. At least I have. Some of the others--Jorrocks
+for instance--have been bored. But, then, they couldn't draw, poor
+dears. Do you know I have done three pictures. That's a lot in this
+military life. One of the courtyard, with cocks and hens and things, and
+in the distance men cleaning their saddles. Another of the vestibule,
+with Julian and Edward consulting over some map or other at a table.
+Another of a "fosse" or coal-pit about a mile away. A coal-pit sounds
+repulsive, but not so in Northern France. They are away from all houses
+and surrounded by corn-fields. The coal refuse is the curious part of
+it. Up it comes from the main shaft and is piled up into a series of
+large pyramids, visible for miles around. Many of the famous "redoubts"
+are coal-refuse pyramids really. And such nice little chimneys.
+Rinaldo--gone! Isn't it heartbreaking! An important person comes nosing
+round, and asks for him. Sir John doesn't like to refuse. I am
+powerless. Adieu, dear Rinaldo! One gets awfully fond of a horse.
+Rinaldo was very naughty sometimes, but I loved him all the more for it.
+And now his good looks have been disastrous. Oh that he had been uglier.
+Isn't it maddening. Such a leaper, so fast, and such courage. Well,
+perhaps I shall see him again.
+
+
+_June 19._
+
+[Sidenote: FEBVIN TO BAILLEUL]
+
+At the last moment an order that we are not to go. Then late last night
+an order to send on an advanced party of one officer and one sergeant
+and two men immediately. So off I go with Sergeant Dobbin and Hunt and
+Noad. We had to find billets and bivouacs for the squadron at a place
+far from here. This we did, and the squadron has just arrived, and we
+have had lunch and are feeling very fat indeed. We have just seen a
+pretty aeroplane show. Six of them flew over our heads towards the
+Boche, and presently puff, puff! went the little dark clouds of smoke
+all amongst them. They then got too high and too far off for us to see,
+but we still saw the Archie shells following them. First a flash in the
+sky, then a very dark spot; then the spot grows larger and fluffier, and
+becomes a dusky little cloud. So you see some flashes, some dark spots,
+and some larger fluffy clouds--all on the wretched aeroplane's track.
+
+Only two returned, alas! but they told us they had brought down three
+Aviatiks.
+
+We're moving with great rapidity up into colder climes. More anon.
+
+
+_June 22._
+
+I wrote a p.c. early this morning, as I thought I might get no other
+chance. Things are all merry and bright. We have moved up like oiled
+lightning from ---- to a rather famous place. Hedges and hop-fields.
+Very interesting church--not hurt at all. We are suffering so (at least,
+the poor men are) from thirst. There's no water anywhere. I long to gulp
+down green pond water. However, that will be remedied shortly, I hope. I
+went into the big town and bought a barrel of beer for the men. Tempting
+Providence. But there's nothing else. The water isn't good even when
+boiled. However, all will be well soon.
+
+
+[Illustration: BAILLEUL
+A peaceful place behind the battle.]
+
+
+_June 23._
+
+[Sidenote: MANY SMELLS AND NO WATER]
+
+The most extraordinary things are happening. All very quiet and humdrum
+on the surface. Only the aeroplanes are busy, and if the sun is between
+you and them there are always the little black high Archie clouds
+following them, like vultures appearing from nowhere.
+
+Our quick bolt up here has had several pleasant results. First, the
+country is very beautiful, more hilly in this immediate neighbourhood,
+with great plains stretching away on all sides. The low hills all have
+woods round them, and a windmill or a church on the top. Second, B
+Squadron have already arrived, and our old Brigade-Major and lots of
+other old friends. It was most joyous meeting them all again. We came
+trotting down one road, covered with dust, and they came trotting down
+another road even more covered with dust, having trekked all day.
+
+Isn't it funny. One gets so quickly used to things that already we have
+ceased to notice the smells, which at first made us wield bottles of
+disinfectant wherever we went. But now, when the farms and outhouses and
+other places where we live smell, we merely laugh, and "fatigues" are
+all at work automatically before nightfall, and by next morning--well,
+the smells have not gone, but the general feeling is that a good start
+has been made.
+
+The water problem is still unsolved, and we get very thirsty; but thirst
+is a small fleabite, after all. "Which would you rather have," I asked a
+discontented lance-corporal, "a bit of a thirst or a dentist drilling a
+hole down a pet nerve?" And he owned he'd rather have a thirst. You
+know, it's most awkward. They come to you when there's any difficulty
+and seem to think you can put things right always. For instance, a man
+came up the other day: "Please, sir, I've lost my haversack." "When did
+you miss it first?" "Between ---- and ----, sir." "Now what do you want
+me to do?" "I don't know, sir." "Do you want me to go back to ---- and
+search the whole of the twenty odd miles to ---- on the off chance of
+finding it?" "No, sir." "Do you want to do so yourself?" "No, sir." "And
+even if I ordered you to go, do you think that, with so many troops
+about, you would be likely to find it still there?" "No, sir."
+
+The result is, of course, that I have to buy one for the unfortunate lad
+in the nearest town. One must eat. And our haversacks are our larders.
+Haversacks are supplied by the army, but it takes such a time to get
+anything, that, if the matter is urgent, it has to be done without the
+army. We (the bloomin' orficers) have a "mess-cart" for all our absurd
+wines and tinned peaches and things, but the men often have nothing but
+the contents of their haversacks.
+
+
+_June 25._
+
+[Sidenote: READY FOR THE PUSH]
+
+We are in a funny state of waiting for something to happen. Rumours
+flying about all the time. We live on them--a bite off one, a slice off
+another, a merry-thought off another. And so we learn the news of the
+world. Papers when we get a chance of going into some town, and then
+only two days old, or else French, which are very scrappy. Often we get
+no news at all for three or four days, except what some passing
+ambulance will vouchsafe. And usually they don't really know much. So
+when there's an extra heavy strafing or an extra quiet lull we learn
+that the entire German staff has been captured, or Rheims evacuated, or
+Holland sunk, or something else equally strange. The M.G.'s were
+hammering away furiously last night, and the whole line was lovely with
+star shells hanging like arc lights in the air, and then dropping slowly
+to earth. They light up everything like immense moons.
+
+
+_June 28._
+
+Starting from the farm where the horses are hidden at nine o'clock last
+night (twenty-one, as we call it out here), after a hot meal, we
+marched through Bedfordshire-like country, along ascending paths, to the
+bottom of a wooded hill where a motor lorry with picks and shovels met
+us. Thence along a narrow muddy path through a wood. The path circles
+round the hill. The east side of the hill faces the Boche front line. It
+was still quite light. The undergrowth thick and dank. Our fellows very
+merry. The Boches know this path, which is pitted with shell holes. They
+shell the place by day, oddly enough, but hardly ever by night.
+
+It was raining gently. Turtle-doves continually crossed our way. I felt
+much intrigued. A very weird wood. The guns crashed lethargically,
+intermittently.
+
+When we got round to the east side of the hill, the R.E.'s, who were
+acting as guides, comforters, and friends, showed us what we were to do:
+to dig a line of trench 6 feet deep, and as narrow as might be, for some
+cables that were to lead into a very important set of dug-outs for
+certain pink and gold people.
+
+The dug-outs are deep in the side of the hill. It's what is called an
+advanced H.Q.--_i.e._, when the Push begins, the gilded ones will crawl
+in and rap out messages to the various commanders, and watch the battle.
+
+The R.E. officers showed us what was wanted, and each man put in his
+pick or shovel to mark the line. This is the procedure: each pick or
+shovel about 2 yards apart, and each man delves on that spot till he is
+6 feet down. If it were not done like this, then (when it became too
+dark to see) the line would be lost. This only applies fully, of course,
+when you are in woods or other cover. Digging isn't really a cavalry
+job. But what of that?
+
+[Sidenote: TRENCH DIGGING]
+
+Well, now we've started. It's about ten o'clock, and getting very dim.
+Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle. Humphry and I creep up (neglectful of duty)
+to the top of the hill. A tiny tower there, smashed to pieces, but
+beautiful in the twilight. We creep about amongst shell craters.
+Presently a strange sweet odour. Flowers? Impossible. We stare into the
+dusk. An exquisite faint scent all around us. Surely, surely, thyme?
+Yes, sweet-williams, thyme. Evidently there has been a cottage here, but
+now only a mass of rubble and beams and glass to show where once it was.
+Sweet-williams, thyme, and later some Canterbury bells. Another
+dream-place, like that old château-farm.
+
+What a view from here of the German lines and ours! As it gets darker,
+the flashes of the guns and the Very lights' solemn brilliance
+illuminate the whole show like a map. That tragic ruin of a town on our
+left is being shelled as usual. Jim is there. In front of us the German
+salient. All comparatively quiet. How lovely it is! The sounds of our
+men digging in the wet soil mingle now with other small noises. Voices
+underground. Listen. And a mouth-organ's cheery bray coming from the
+bowels of the earth. It is pitch-dark. We stand up like Generals
+surveying the battle-field. No danger. The Boche does not waste
+ammunition.
+
+The rain is very heavy. I have got a tuft of sweet-william to smell.
+
+We return to the men. They are wet through, but quite happy and content.
+Not a bullet, not a scrap of anything that goes pop. They work in a
+warm, wet peace. That is one of the odd things you learn--that only
+certain places are dangerous, and usually only at certain times.
+
+The rain is coming down with tropical intensity. I am in a misty dream.
+It's all so mysterious. Suddenly I fall over something--plonk into the
+middle of some excavated earth, which the rain has made into semolina
+pudding. Tiresome to be absent-minded. How it pours! Midnight.
+
+The roots of the trees make it very difficult to dig tidily, but the men
+use their "billucks" with the unerring skill of farmers, and their
+spades and picks as you or I would use a pencil. Time goes on. The
+trench must be done before 2.30 a.m. We have to be gone before dawn. It
+is nearly done now. Half-past twelve. The rain is stopping. One o'clock.
+No, it isn't. It's coming down again. Half-past one. The trench is
+finished. We must cover up all signs of it with branches, lest the wily
+Taube should see, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.
+
+A quarter to two.
+
+[Sidenote: A STRAFE]
+
+Suddenly crash! bang! clash! boom! bang! We almost jump out of our
+skins. Where the deuce were all those guns hidden? From all about us,
+and far away behind and on either flank, our guns have begun strafing.
+The most hideous and deafening din.
+
+The ground seems to shake. Then an order comes that we are to clear out
+at once. We do so. The Boches haven't answered yet, but they will. The
+whole thing seems quite unreal. The men vastly entertained. I honestly
+felt as if I were at some exciting melodrama. The least cessation of the
+guns, and I found myself saying: "Don't stop! don't stop!" I shouted
+into Corporal Nutley's car: "Can you hear what I'm saying?" and he
+answered: "No, sir."
+
+At last we got out into the little path, and had to double along through
+the mud. Humphry was last man out, and he saw the one and only shell
+the Boches sent over, exploding quite close to the aforementioned
+dug-out.
+
+Isn't it funny. The Boches don't apparently know of this dug-out, or of
+the cable trenches, or they would, of course, smash it to pieces. And,
+for some reason that I haven't yet grasped, they never reply to our guns
+immediately. They wait for perhaps ten minutes, and _then_ they don't
+always reply to the same spot we spoke from. As, for example, this wood.
+Our guns were all in and round about the wood. The Boches apparently
+strafed back at an unoffending village on the west side of the hill.
+
+So, with our guns still behaving like things delirious, we eventually
+reached the horses. Jezebel was quietly gorging herself with long
+luscious grass beside the hedge. She told me she hadn't noticed anything
+unusual. Poor Swallow was standing quite still, with his nostrils wide
+open, breathing hard and trembling all over. A good many horses were
+trembling, but the majority agreed with Jezebel: "It's only some silly
+nonsense on the part of those Human Beings again. Don't listen."
+
+Then we saddled up and rode back to a place well behind, where we could
+exercise the beasties. They had been given no exercise for three days.
+And so home again to this farm. The horses are all in a field surrounded
+by trees, and couldn't be seen from above at all. I have seen lots
+of other horse-lines of other units, though, much closer to the front
+than this is--quite open to view. The fact is, I think, that Hun
+aircraft very seldom indeed gets across into our preserves.
+
+
+[Illustration: LE MONT DES CATS
+Near YPRES
+In the early days of the war spies used to signal from the monastery on
+the top of this hill. The country round about is quite flat and
+water-logged.]
+
+
+_July 6._
+
+[Sidenote: THE ROADS NEAR DRANONTRE]
+
+Overnight it appears in orders that the roads from ---- to ---- via ----
+are to be reported on with reference to their suitability for heavy
+transport, guns, cavalry, infantry, etc.
+
+So after an early breakfast Hunt comes round, with Swallow for me and
+Jezebel for himself, haversack rations for us both, and feeds for the
+horses. I feel very much on the qui-vive, as I haven't seen that
+particular part before.
+
+A grey warm day. Some miles to go due south before we get near our
+destination. As we approach it we find, as usual, roads and railways
+being made, and fatigue-parties repainting tents with blotches and
+stripes. Then come notices, "No traffic along this road," or, "This road
+liable to be shelled," with signboards at every corner, "To ----" or
+some other place in the trenches. Sometimes the notices say
+"Something-or-other Avenue" or "Burlington Arcade," etc.--nicknames, but
+recognized officially. And all the time we are passing endless lorries
+and Red Cross waggons and troops and dug-out camps. As we get closer the
+signs of shelling get worse, and children are seen no longer. Old men,
+though, occasionally observed working in a field quite unperturbed.
+Rarely a French soldier or an interpreter with his sphinx badges. All
+this quite lost on Hunt, who has "quite got used to abroad, thank you,
+sir." He is eating chocolate or something, half a horse-length (the
+correct distance) behind me.
+
+Now on our left is a famous ridge, with a ruined village on the top.
+Not, you understand, a ridge in the Swiss sense, but rather in the
+Norfolk sense. I should like to go and see it, but it's too open to the
+Boche's eye, and I don't want to dismount yet. So we curve round
+right-handed a bit. Aha! "To ----." Nous voilà! Follow down this muddy
+track under cover of the ridge, and we arrive at ----. A wood just
+beyond the little town. Oh, mournful wood! "Bois épais, redouble ton
+ombre." But they say the anemones and the primroses were as merry and
+sweet as ever this spring. Bravo little wood!
+
+The village is, of course, evacuated by all inhabitants. The houses all
+in ruins. By now all the remaining windows have been boarded up and the
+blown-out doors barred against prying eyes. Here we are at an old
+estaminet called "Aux Coeurs joyeux." There's hardly anything but the
+sign left. At the cross-roads in the centre of the town is the church,
+so dismal. No roof, pillars broken and lying about the floor amongst
+débris of broken images, chairs, and muddy rubble.
+
+[Sidenote: PLOEGSTEERT]
+
+As I am coming out I turn over the hand of an image, and underneath it
+what the deuce is this? Why, a fragment of an old picture, torn and
+decaying away. What shall I do? Leave it to rot? Give it to ... Yes,
+exactly ... to whom? And would anyone thank me for it? Just a head of
+St. John, very battered and faded. It's a fragment about a foot square,
+and through all the mud one can see something like this: A head of St.
+John in the corner; rays of light (two very thin small rays) shining on
+him, and a look of great suffering on his face. The background a sort of
+dull ochre. Evidently once a large composition. There are two books, one
+with EVAN, and the other with, I think, BIBLIA SACRA,
+written on it. It is quite worthless except from a sentimental point of
+view.
+
+The exposure and the heat of the explosions have sadly cracked and
+peeled the paint, but it seems vaguely symbolical. Near here I picked up
+some minute bits of green glass.
+
+However, there was a notice: "It is dangerous to loiter here." So I tore
+myself away, and we remounted. The Boche can't see into the town
+because of the remaining buildings, but the whole place is utterly
+empty--not a dog even.
+
+Soon the road to the next village _is_ exposed to the Boche's view.
+Therefore canvas screens about 20 feet high have been erected, so that,
+if necessary, troops, and even lorries, can hurry by. It is most
+curious. "But for that thin bit of canvas, my good Swallow, you would
+get something into your tummy you wouldn't like," I remarked. At that
+moment the sun came out. We were keeping to the side of the road where
+it is soft going. Suddenly Swallow leaped like a stag into the middle of
+the road all over the _pavé_. Panic terror. He had seen the shadow of a
+starling flit across his path!
+
+Jezebel was tittuping along behind, thinking only of her next feed. I
+cannot get her to take any interest in these thrilling spots. Sometimes
+a soldier or two would emerge from a cellar, the entrance to which would
+be piled up with sand-bags. And once or twice bang! bang! goes a gun
+quite close by.
+
+Well, so we go through the next deserted and wrecked village, again out
+of sight of the Boche, because of the ruins and a few trees. Then into a
+very famous town indeed, and across a river three times by three
+different bridges--not the old bridges, which are broken down, but
+sapper-built bridges. Here is a party going into the trenches just on
+the far side of the town. They look distinctly cheery, and are all of
+the same ripe brown. Thence right-handed again and gradually back to
+civilization, or, rather, to life first and civilization some way
+behind. Eventually people strolling about and shops. I bought a pair of
+those jolly French-tartan stockings for little Bun. With a grey dress
+they will look most charming, I think.
+
+[Sidenote: ARMENTIERES]
+
+Again masses of soldiers with their field-kitchens in muddy fields from
+which all traces of grass have been stamped long ago. And the
+everlasting mule. There are mules everywhere out here.
+
+Such attractive cottages, white with green shutters, and sometimes
+little Dutch gardens. Many windmills, several pigeons always fluttering
+round each. A lorry in a ditch. A roadside canteen, with perhaps an
+A.S.C. camp near by. Fields and fields of corn and every other crop
+under the sun. I long to sketch, but feel slightly nervous of so doing
+so far from camp. I don't want to be arrested as a spy. We are
+practically out of the danger area by now, but you never know. Some
+boring A.P.M. might pounce on the sketch and create a botheration.
+
+Meantime I have been laboriously making pretty maps to present to Sir
+John, coloured maps showing where such and such a rise of ground could
+be held, or where such and such a road offers difficulties to transport,
+etc. But it's not easy to do, and we don't get back to camp till five
+minutes before stables, having covered about thirty miles. Besides, we
+had to stop and feed ourselves and the horses.
+
+Then stables. Sergeant Hodge reprimanded for not having reported a bad
+kick. Southcombe slacking a bit. Must keep an eagle eye on that young
+man. At the end a whistle (no trumpets allowed). The horses all neigh
+and toss their heads and paw. Nosebags are put on, and after touring
+round to see that all is correct we slope off to tea, which Hale and Co.
+have got all ready. Luxurious ménage as of yore. But good when you're
+hungry, there's no doubt. We are moving again--probably to-morrow.
+
+
+_July 10._
+
+We have moved. The sixth time altogether. Not far though. A close view
+of the sweet-william hill. It must be sketched.
+
+I am sitting on some sacks of corn, wondering why Fritz doesn't lob over
+a crump or two, just to wake us up. Jezebel is gorging herself close by.
+Swallow eats a bit, and then suddenly looks up and sniffs nervously. I
+suppose he has heard a beetle trotting by, or seen a twig fall off a
+tree.
+
+The horses are all picketed out in a field, and we are in bivvies. Hale
+has made me a bed out of some poles and wire netting, as he says it is a
+clay subsoil and I mustn't lie on the grass. I suppose he knows.
+
+
+_July 12._
+
+[Sidenote: THE HORSES]
+
+I'm writing this in a queer dilapidated mud cottage, inhabited by an
+ancient ex-soldier aged eighty-three. He is very difficult to
+understand. His language is quite foreign to me. But he owns the
+quaintest little doll-like image of the Virgin in a glass case, and
+several Bristol balls! I nearly fell flat when I saw them. His
+grandfather, I think he says, was in England once. The cottage is quite
+close to our present camp, and we go in for meals when it's very wet.
+
+The bed Hale made me is growing into a house. He has discovered various
+old sacks, bits of tarred felt, and planks, and the place is becoming a
+most attractive little abode.
+
+Then you must imagine an old wild-cherry tree, and lots of young oaks
+and elders, etc., all round. Jezebel and Swallow live close by. Jezebel
+has acquired a new trick. You know she doesn't like having her tummy
+groomed. Well, now (especially, of course, when it's very muddy) she
+waits till Hunt has finished dressing her, and then, as soon as his back
+is turned, she lies down and rolls. Hunt is in despair. He used to be
+really fond of her. But now I believe he'd kill her if he could,
+sometimes. All his labour entirely and ridiculously in vain. I'm
+convinced that she does it on purpose, because she always chooses just
+the moment when he has achieved a beautiful polish on her, and either
+has to go off to breakfast or else to get the saddle or something. It's
+as good as a play.
+
+We are learning the "tactical" merits of all the roads and woods and
+hills (such as they are) all along our sector of front, and as much as
+we can, with field-glasses, of the other side. An offensive. What fun.
+But exactly where are we going to offend? Rumours everywhere. If, we
+say, that village or that ridge has to be taken from this or that
+unexpected position, how shall we do it? Suppose we get Fritz on the
+hop, as they have near Peronne. Where are the most covered approaches to
+the slopes of that hill? Shall we carry the thing off as splendidly as
+those squadrons did before Peronne, or shall we bungle the show? You'll
+see.
+
+We get so few papers here, and only two days old at that, but no one
+seems much the worse for it.
+
+[Sidenote: NEUVE EGLISE]
+
+Only one solitary man with lice so far. The man has been sent away, and
+is, I hear, to be given sulphur baths and scrubbed with a scrubbing
+brush.
+
+Oh, I was going to say just now--_re_ reconnoitring--that we were doing
+all the ground about a village where there is a church even more smashed
+than the St. John place. It is on a hill, and all the village is Sahara.
+The church remains with the remnants of four outside walls and the
+tower. Fritz does not destroy the tower, as it is a good spot for him to
+range on to. And outside the tower, right up at the top, is the bronze
+minute-hand of the old clock. The rest of the clock-face has been blown
+into the middle of the church, and lies there nearly complete amidst a
+crumbled heap of pillars and mortar and chair-legs and pulpit fragments.
+One notice on a house amused me so, and the troop too. It says, "Do not
+_touch_ this house." The reason being rather obvious. For if you did
+touch the house, it would certainly fall on to your head. The next shell
+will bring it down, even if it's a couple of hundred yards away, merely
+by the vibration. We find shell holes so useful for watering the horses.
+They seem to retain water in a most curious way.
+
+
+_July 19._
+
+On the move again. A four days' trek. Not more than twenty miles a day,
+in order to keep the horses "in the pink." They are certainly very fit
+now, and a gentle twenty miles a day just keeps them nicely exercised.
+But twenty miles _at a walk_ is not overexciting. Still, it is
+interesting to be covering the ground. We already know quite a lot of
+the back of the front. Last night we arrived in a cool lull after
+showers. From quiet and uneventful stretches of hedgeless corn-fields,
+intersected by long straight roads, lined sometimes with poplars, but
+more often with lopped wych-elms or willows, we descended rather
+suddenly into a little wooded valley where a village sits by the trouty
+stream. After watering the horses at the stream, we filed by squadrons
+into various fields and picketed down for the night. Some of us in a
+small but clean estaminet, others in barns.
+
+A very peaceful trek, quite different from the dazzling swoop that was
+threatened.
+
+
+_July 20._
+
+Am I telling you about the things you want to hear? Usually I think I've
+talked mostly about our surroundings, doings, and only to a very small
+extent about our thoughts. But, truth to relate, we think so little
+that there is not much in that line to record. On this job you just
+can't think. And a good thing too, perhaps.
+
+[Sidenote: FLESSELLES]
+
+However, here we are, and here I expect we shall remain for, say, a
+week. The horses are all right out in the open. The men are in barns.
+But we are in cottages--real, almost English-looking cottages. Edward
+and I share a room in one, and the others are dotted about the village.
+Now, this is the cottage:
+
+From the high street (the only street) you turn into a little gate, and
+then walk down a path of brick with a narrow flower border on either
+side, and vegetables beyond. The cottage is white, with lace curtains
+and brick floors, without carpets, like all French cottages. The walls
+have endless pictures of saints and things, with occasional crucifixes
+and school certificates and faded photographs of people in stiff dresses
+and crimped hair.
+
+Out at the back more kitchen-garden with some fruit-trees.
+
+Altogether quite a charming little place. Dusty and rather flat open
+country intersected by deepish valleys, not unlike the Cirencester road
+if you removed all the woods, or nearly all. We don't, of course, know
+what we are going to do now.
+
+
+_July 23._
+
+Things is curiouser and curiouser. In all haste we got ready to move. We
+then moved like tortoises. I rode over to ---- yesterday. Cavalry all
+over the place like locusts. And, lawks! what a din! Guns in a violent
+paroxysm of rage. Aeroplanes wandering about in the sky, purring like
+angry panthers, all yellow in the sunlight. And all day and night more
+dusty men and dusty horses and dusty lorries and dusty guns coming and
+going, coming and going.
+
+The other squadron at last quite close to us. Long talks with Dennis.
+He's had an exciting time, and was under orders for a most hair-raising
+job, which didn't come off owing to Fritz's tiresome habit of doing the
+unexpected. Horrors! The General has been trying Swallow. I fear he may
+steal him. Of course he has every right to any horse in the regiment,
+but it is quite difficult to smile. Swallow is, unfortunately, even more
+showy than Rinaldo was; but he shied at a goat, bless him, and I think
+that may just turn the scale. I shall now proceed to train Swallow to
+shy at every blade of grass, every grain of sand. Long live that goat!
+We are still "standing by." It is a wearing existence. I bathed
+yesterday in a well-known river. So beautiful and willowy.
+
+
+_July 28._
+
+[Sidenote: A BATH]
+
+Temperature 100,000°! And I am lying on a bed in a wee cottage, very,
+very dusty and dirty. Hale, however, is going to bring some water from
+the pump, and, oh Jerusalem, won't it be heavenly--a bath! All these
+things off, and lovely clean things on, and lovely coffee to drink when
+that's done. I wouldn't change the prospects of the next half-hour for
+all the pearls and peacocks of Araby--no, not if you offered me the
+Peace of Europe! Europe be blowed! I want my bath.
+
+You see, it's like this: The corps H.Q. moved to a different area some
+days ago, preceded by us. Everything in the area left in an utterly
+unorganized, uncatalogued condition. We have to tear round and find out
+where the various divisions can go.
+
+And we have _got_ to find room for more divisions than have ever
+occupied this area before. Useless to come back and report that such and
+such villages have no water for men or horses. The water has got to be
+found. Dig for it. Organize fatigue-parties and dig. Dam up little
+trickles by the roadside until quite large ponds are formed. Get the
+engineers and pioneers on to it. Labour battalions--anything. So I've
+been riding madly about, and I'm like a treacle pudding in a
+sand-storm.
+
+The bath! Hale, you are a most excellent fellow. That'll do splendidly.
+Have you got my towel?... INTERVAL.... And now, dear friends,
+it is another man that you see before you. A man who has had a bath. A
+man less like a bit of oily motor-waste, and more like Sir George
+Alexander. This delicious coffee, too! A bowl of it, made by Mme.
+Whatever-her-name-is. I take it up in both hands and quaff it. Here's to
+You and to Home, and to Everybody--and (just to show there's no ill
+feeling) here's to the poor old Boche!
+
+
+_July 29._
+
+In the same cottage.
+
+It's very hot. Ammunition lorries go by in an endless string, making the
+deuce of a dust. But we are far away from guns and gun food and noise. I
+got leave to go up to ---- yesterday.
+
+I do dislike noise so, don't you? The noise of a battery in action is
+diabolical, and the very thought of it makes me shiver. There go the
+senseless lorries, all packed with music for a more hellish orchestra
+than you can remotely imagine. The first few bars are enough to drive
+you nearly frantic. It's unholy. It seems to split your head and
+tear your ears out of their sockets. Can you understand a noise that
+hits you? Hits unbearably, and then again. Crashes on to you. Bangs your
+bones out of your skin, till you feel dazed and sick.
+
+Still the lorries go by.
+
+
+[Illustration: FRICOURT CEMETERY
+The moon and some signal lights over FRICOURT. LA
+BOISELLE just over the hill. French crosses all bent and twisted.
+The little chapel still standing.]
+
+
+_August 3._
+
+[Sidenote: GUNS AT FRICOURT]
+
+I hear the General doesn't like Swallow, so there's a good chance of his
+returning. When you get angry with Swallow, he loses control of his legs
+altogether, and they all fly about in every direction. He is quite like
+Rinaldo in character,--not so perpetually fidgety, but as nervous, and
+more easily frightened. Jezebel is showing her worth now like a Trojan.
+She knows she has to make up for the loss of Swallow (whom I think she
+rather misses). She is behaving splendidly. She is blatantly well, and
+obeys all orders like clockwork; never tired; always hungry--a model.
+The other mare, Moonlight, a dark brown, seems to be somehow exhausted.
+I think she has had a very hard time of it, and has been wounded in the
+foot. Her foot is all right now, but she seems to have no life left in
+her. The war has utterly beaten her. Hunt is grazing and grooming and
+petting her all day. So she may pick up. At present she is somehow
+rather pathetic. She was with the Indian cavalry before she got
+wounded. And then she went to a veterinary hospital. She is well made,
+and may possibly brighten up. Hunt declares that she has "lost all her
+courage." I'm glad I'm not a horse.
+
+
+_August 5._
+
+This is such an amazing country and in such an amazing condition. I
+could collect a Harrod's Stores in a day--interesting and useful things,
+too. But it's impossible to carry things about. One daren't overload the
+horses, and one daren't overload the transport. Both are so heavy laden,
+as it is.
+
+The signal job is quite interesting, really, and the Colonel gives me an
+absolutely free hand.
+
+Jezebel and Co. are driven distracted by the horse-flies. I took Jezebel
+into a stream to-day, but she started to sit down! So the flies must
+just bite, I fear. Large grey brutes.
+
+Hunt made me laugh so last night. I was looking round the horses with
+Edward. They were waiting to be fed with their evening hay. To my
+surprise and pleasure, Moonlight suddenly neighed. "Evidently getting
+her appetite back," I remarked. "Oh yes, sir," says Hunt; "several
+times I've caught her _hollerin'_ for her meals lately!" Isn't that a
+lovely expression?
+
+[Sidenote: JEZEBEL IN ONE OF HER MOODS]
+
+Hunt is such a good chap. He thinks nothing of "abroad," but a lot of
+the "'osses," as he calls them. I found him what seemed to me a very
+nice loft to sleep in when we got here. But no: "I'd rather sleep with
+my 'osses, sir, thank you." And he sleeps practically under their noses.
+"You see, sir, the mare might get one of her moods on."
+
+He is getting very fond of Jezebel now, and whenever she errs, he
+attributes the error to one of her moods.
+
+She tore her nosebag to pieces the other day; whether because she was
+hungry and it was empty, or because it amused her, or because she was
+being bitten by a fly, I don't know. No one seems to have seen her do
+it. "One of her moods," says Hunt; and that's all there is to be said
+about the incident.
+
+My dear, this country is most enchanting. Far away from nasty noises,
+full of unexpected wooded valleys and willowy streams.
+
+All the little shrines are, as usual, surrounded by half-clipped trees.
+
+And the wild-flowers. Clear pale blue succory is the most charming of
+all, and I am going to send you some plants as soon as they have ceased
+flowering.
+
+
+_August 6._
+
+You can't think how difficult it is to take any interest in military
+matters sometimes. The inclination to let things slide. The feeling that
+an order is not so terrifying as it once was; that after all, who will
+know or bother if one furtive subaltern creeps out one evening to
+sketch?
+
+
+_August 8._
+
+Do you know, it's unintelligent, but I do so enjoy being here away from
+the fevers of war. War is getting tedious, and the summer is all too
+short.
+
+Swallow is coming back. Isn't it splendid! The General finds him too
+irritating and tiresome. Jezebel will be glad, for she doesn't like the
+ghost-horse Moonlight, and she never really disliked Swallow. I can't
+say she liked him, because she likes no one, dear lamb. But she used to
+look on Swallow with rather less suspicion, somehow. And Swallow has a
+habit of licking that she approves of. I have often seen her snap at him
+even while he is licking her; but he always continues after a moment. I
+think it soothes her when the flies are tiresome.
+
+This place has a beautiful church, which I have drawn. It's quite an
+unusually charming bit of the country.
+
+
+_August 11._
+
+[Sidenote: DOMART]
+
+Jezebel did such an astonishing thing yesterday. I was out with the
+signallers practising. We didn't want the bother of holding or picketing
+the horses. So I ordered "off-saddle," and then put a guard over the
+disused quarry where I had decided to leave them. The quarry had a
+grassy floor, and walls of chalk that in one place were only about 7
+foot high. Jezebel has been so good (for her) lately, that I determined
+to leave her with the other horses. They were stripped of all bridles
+and saddles and things, and had heaps of room to wander.
+
+Meanwhile we were carrying on with our work.
+
+Presently shouts from the guard. I went back to see what was the matter.
+My dear, Jezebel had tried to jump out of the quarry!
+
+She had tried twice, but the sides were too steep and high, and she had
+slipped back. When I arrived, she was quietly grazing as if nothing had
+happened. Ah, but wait. This is not all.
+
+Later on in the morning another hooroosh. A loud squealing and sounds of
+kicking. One of her moods again, I thought to myself grimly. That
+well-known voice. I should recognize her squeal anywhere. As I was going
+towards the quarry with Corporal Dutton to get her tied up or else
+hobbled, lo and behold! the two guards had vanished. "What the
+devil...." And all of a sudden out pour the horses careering downhill
+like mad! It was so appalling that Corporal Dutton and I just stood and
+shouted with laughter.
+
+My dear, if there is anything in the whole world that goads a Major, a
+Brigadier, or any other military man, to fury and madness, it is a loose
+horse.
+
+Imagine, then, forty-four horses all riderless, without saddles or
+bridles (and therefore almost impossible to catch), stampeding straight
+into a corps H.Q. village. This village is crawling with Generals!
+
+Well, in the end we caught them all, and by some dazzling piece of luck,
+for which Allah be praised, no General, no Colonel, nor anyone else,
+seems to have got wind of the incident. Subalterns, yes, and I am
+sumptuously ragged about it. But how all the Generals and things
+happened to be out of sight and hearing at the time, I don't know. And
+_still_ this is not the cream of the comedy.
+
+After giving orders for rounding up the animals, I went on to the quarry
+with Corporal Dutton. My dear, _There was Jezebel grazing, as cool as a
+cucumber!_
+
+She still further insulted me by coming up and trying to push her nose
+into my pocket, where I sometimes keep an apple for her.
+
+[Sidenote: ANOTHER MOVE NORTHWARDS]
+
+The guards, you see, had instantly gone in to get her away from the
+horse she was kicking, when we first heard the commotion. The other
+horses had mooned out of the entrance gap, and then, I suppose,
+something--a fly, perhaps--had frightened them, and off they had
+galloped. While "the accursed female," as we sometimes call Jezebel, too
+sensible to stampede, quietly continued feeding. I shall never be taken
+in by her air of innocence again. Never. I don't a bit mind saying I was
+decidedly alarmed. That mare might have been responsible for the death
+of the Corps Commander.
+
+O Jezebel, I wish I could get angry with you and give you a jolly good
+hiding one day. But you know I can't, you dear old thing. I'm writing
+this in the orchard, where the H.Q. horses live, and Jezebel is standing
+sleepily in the shade of her tree. She looks intensely stupid. She
+occasionally tries to flick away a fly with her short tail. Occasionally
+she sighs deeply, with that blubbery, spluttery noise that all horses
+make when they sigh.
+
+
+_August 15._
+
+On the move. This is our first day's trek, and we are at a place where
+we have been before--but not the same billets. I am in a cottage with
+an earth floor (which looks very odd with a hideous drab-coloured
+wall-paper), and small children and hens, both dirty, wander in and out
+of my room. It's too hot to keep the door latched. A swallow's nest in
+the room next door; and the people say that, although the young have
+flown, they still return at night.
+
+
+_August 19._
+
+The Adjutant is away, and won't be returning for some time; so I am
+still acting. And this, together with signal work, etc., is somewhat
+arduous. I live all day in the "office," a very small bivouac in a green
+field. There I sit praying for inspiration, when letters come in marked
+_Urgent_, beginning something like this:
+
+     "LP/3657042--G1.
+
+     "Ref. your memo HC/516342/L12 of 13/8/16, please find A.F. 361B for
+     completion and immediate return."
+
+And I haven't the least idea what I said in my memo HC/516342/L12 of
+13/8/16, and I can't find any record of it. And I can't for the life of
+me make out how I am meant to fill in A.F. 361B, because I haven't the
+least idea what it's all about.
+
+
+_August 26._
+
+[Sidenote: BEHIND KEMMEL]
+
+Impossible to write yesterday, and only a brief scrawl to-day.
+
+The regiment is being scattered over the face of the earth--an O.P.
+here, an O.P. there; a digging-party here, a draining-party there, etc.,
+etc., etc.; not to mention a few on duty as military police _pro tem._,
+others guarding bomb shelters, others reconnoitring new areas for new
+divisions, etc. Dennis is very badly wounded. He can't be moved yet.
+Some bits of shell went into his thigh, up his back, and it's not
+certain yet whether it entered his lungs or not. They are afraid so. He
+was on his tummy at an O.P. A crump got him. Dear old Dennis! I hope
+he'll pull round. Also Clive is very seriously wounded, I fear. Damn!
+
+
+_August 27._
+
+I am Acting Adjutant now. An Adjutant's job is a most hairy job, and I
+sit with drops of perspiration dripping off my brow all day. Never see
+the horses, never get any exercise except for a moment or two.
+
+
+_August 29._
+
+We are probably going to move again soon, and consequently the amount of
+correspondence is vast. Clive is better, I think. Dennis about the
+same. I suppose a thing can go into your lung and not kill you?
+
+
+_September 2._
+
+The Colonel seemed (from a telegram he sent yesterday morning) to be in
+a great hurry for me to come down to the other squadron. So I decided to
+go by train, and send Hunt with the horses. And this is the train
+journey.
+
+The station at ---- quite recovered and tidy after a feeble strafing the
+other day. Even two or three civilians travelling. Not many of the
+military--a hundred or so, perhaps, all waiting and smoking idly, each
+armed with his "Movement Order." The dull boom of guns not excessive,
+though there's a frequent "plom! plom! plom!" of the Archies, and the
+sky is dotted with clusters of pretty little shrapnel clouds. Sometimes
+the crack! crack! crack! crack! of machine guns high up in the blue. It
+makes you feel slightly homesick. I don't quite know why. That sort of
+thing isn't done at home.
+
+[Sidenote: THROUGH HAZEBROUCK]
+
+In comes the train. The French station officials all in a paroxysm of
+excitement because one Tommy throws down a gas helmet for the train to
+run over. Up we clamber. Hale heaves up valise and coat and so forth,
+and retires to a "third," while I feel a beast lounging in this
+luxurious "first." Off we go, and I look out at all the familiar
+country.
+
+There's one of those quaint French notices in the carriage:
+
+    TAISEZ-VOUS!
+    MÉFIEZ-VOUS!
+    LES OREILLES ENNEMIES VOUS ÉCOUTENT!
+
+All too necessary, they tell me.
+
+_Later._--It is getting dark. We stop at a large town that I know well.
+Two hours to wait. I turn in to a Follies show. There is usually one
+going on, run by this or that division, all soldiers, but looking very
+odd in their paint and ruffles. But what a curious concert. The first
+I've seen out here. The comic Scot vastly popular; but even more so are
+hideously sentimental songs all about the last bugle and death and my
+dead friends under the earth and eternal sleep. You know? However, they
+love it, and the dismal piano beats a tinny accompaniment.
+
+Staff officers even are here, and I recognize one Somerset; also Grey,
+who was in the Gun section with Dennis and me, now a Captain. Delightful
+talking over old times.
+
+_Later._--Into the train again. On the platform beforehand I meet a
+gunner subaltern. We talk. He's very well read, and interested in lots
+of the things I love so much. We discuss the war. He knows a lot of the
+billets I know. Evidently we have nearly met out here often before. What
+is that book he is reading? Richard Jefferies? From Jefferies to
+Maeterlinck. What has become of him? War so foreign to that mystic mind.
+Yet his beautiful abbey in Flanders must be in the hands of Fritz, if it
+still exists at all. We talk for about two hours. Then he gets out at
+----. I don't know what his name is, and very likely I won't ever meet
+him again. But out here one makes friends quickly. There are so many of
+us all in the same boat. And one hardly expects ever to meet again. Then
+(alone in the carriage) I doze. The electric light in full blaze, and no
+curtains are down. Stations rather like bad dreams. Soldiers everywhere.
+A great clanking of horse-trucks and gun-carriages. Vast stores of
+timber for huts. Bookstalls open all night. These trains seem to hoot
+and whistle most horribly. Far more noisy than English trains, surely.
+That, combined with all the shouting and clatter of trollies, etc.,
+rather racking in the small hours. At 5 a.m. we arrive at ----, where we
+all change.
+
+_Later._--No one allowed outside the station except officers and
+sergeants. But, dash it all, I can't leave Hale here the whole day. Our
+train leaves at 8.36 to-night. The R.T.O. will be here at 7 a.m. Let's
+see what we can work. Meanwhile (5.30) the platformless station is full
+of men, who have just dumped themselves and their kits down where they
+stood. They haven't finished sleeping. It looks like a battle-field.
+They lie in every attitude, officers among them. Hale is eating from his
+bully-beef tin in silence. A few men stand round a Y.M.C.A. stall
+drinking coffee or eating chocolate, cake, and stuff.
+
+[Sidenote: ABBEVILLE]
+
+_Later._--I got Hale out, and took him to see the cathedral. He said he
+thought it must have cost a lot of money. Not a bad criticism, either.
+Then I let him go his own way, and now it's 1.45 p.m. Had a charming
+lunch--two oeufs à la coque, thé, and croissants. Now I'm sitting by
+the side of the river--very peaceful. There's a white goat on the other
+bank, and its reflection is dancing gently all the time.
+
+Several French widows are talking together near the goat, their black
+veils hanging funereally; and there's a small boy with socks and a
+bowler hat, all black, too. Poor dears!
+
+Good heavens alive! there's George! He has just flashed by in a car, red
+cap and all. If only there had been time to hail him! Now for a sleep
+till it's time for tea.
+
+
+_September 5._
+
+This is a part of the line I don't know at all, a most exciting area. I
+have been up several times into what is by the way of being our front
+line, but the whole thing is so chaotic that often the Huns come into
+our trenches and we go into theirs quite by mistake.
+
+I have several times gone right across the open, within full view of
+Fritz (whom I could see), at a distance of 600 yards. I think they must
+all be very confused, also, as there is very little rifle fire and very
+little organized sniping. Nothing but shelling, with the result that for
+miles and miles there's just tumbled earth.
+
+The famous woods you read about are mere scratchy little collections of
+a few tree-stumps splintered and wrecked beyond belief. Things lie
+scattered everywhere in aimless profusion. Muddy rifles, coats, boots,
+and every description of kit, both British and Hun. I have met lots of
+men I know, and everyone is very cheery and hopeful. Fritz is
+withdrawing his big guns--always a good sign. However, the myriads of
+prisoners nearly all look a sound type of man still. They are put to
+work a long way behind the line immediately, which is good.
+
+
+_September 7._
+
+[Sidenote: THE SOMME FRONT]
+
+We have been for some time right up in parts quite destitute of houses
+and villages and shops. All the remnants of villages here are ruins. And
+messing is consequently more difficult. So may I have a large-sized cake
+now and then?
+
+The war isn't over yet, I fear. We live in the usual touch-and-go
+condition.
+
+
+_September 8._
+
+Things hum. Troops like ants all over the ground. In tents, in bivvies,
+in the open, everywhere. And the eternal chain of motor lorries bringing
+up ammunition and supplies. These one sees all over France. But here
+they block half the roads. Well, yesterday morning I rode out alone with
+the Colonel and two orderlies. We went to some high ground from which
+you can see it all, dismounted, and sent the horses back. In front of
+us, in the valley, a wrecked town with the strangest thing on the
+still-standing tower. I hope to make a picture of it if ever I can get
+any time again.
+
+Later in the day from one of our O.P.'s I began a sketch of the whole
+panorama of the battle. Desolate ragged country, torn with shell wounds;
+the poor scarecrow trees like arms stretched up to heaven for help.
+Fields that once were golden with corn now grey and scarred with white
+trenches that look like a network of pale worms lying where they died.
+
+Now, from another O.P. I'm looking at the arid chaos below. Arid and
+lonely-looking, but not silent. A strafe is on. Seems to be getting
+louder and more continuous. We passed on our way here a great naval gun
+crashing out death to the burrowing Huns. Swallow doesn't like naval
+guns.
+
+From flimsy net shelters flash the expensive guns, and the bombardment
+gathers strength, gathers volume, until you'd think something must
+burst--the world or the universe: either might split from end to end.
+The dust and smoke are gradually making everything invisible. Crumps
+come whistling and heaving up great clouds of heavy blackness. We look
+at our watches. Zero hour in five minutes. The aeroplanes buzzing aloft,
+and the sausages sitting among the low clouds, inert and so
+vulnerable-looking. Can there be anything left? Can a single soul live?
+
+
+[Illustration: TRENCHES BETWEEN FRICOURT AND LA BOISELLE
+They don't look much like trenches, because they were battered to
+pieces. A 'dump' on the near horizon was hit by a Boche shell. It blazed
+and crackled and smouldered all night, a drifting column of dull pink
+smoke.]
+
+
+_September 9._
+
+Surely we shall get through. Even in spite of the rain. The rain has
+made the country into a quagmire.
+
+Reconnoitred the front trenches to-day with the Colonel, in a particular
+part where everything is at sixes and sevens, and no one quite
+knows what we haven't or have got. Most odd. Shells of all calibres
+bursting on every side--corpses, odours unspeakable.
+
+[Sidenote: DELVILLE WOOD]
+
+You see, things are expected to happen soon, and so I'm anxious to know
+all about it. This part of the line is terrific.
+
+Where we are, and for miles and miles around, myriads of troops,
+cavalry, artillery, everything, all camped in the open--no concealment.
+Mud? Why, everyone is mud, up to the eyes, and so are the horses. This
+big movement has quite dislocated the ordinary trench warfare, and now
+all over the dreary uplands are trenches hurriedly dug by the Hun and
+then abandoned. Trenches that often barely shelter you above the knees.
+Chaos, chaos. Rifles lying to rust in the mud, duds everywhere, men
+sitting in dug-outs, not knowing what they are expected to do next.
+Others in mere scratched-out shelters or in actual shell holes.
+Sometimes they sing. Often they are asleep. Wreckage indescribable.
+Shrapnel cracking into black clouds close by. Enormous and magnificent
+H.E.'s hurling up black earth and red earth, and smoke that drifts
+slowly and solidly away to limbo. Poor dead men lying about, and dead
+horses, too. And in the trenches this limitless porridge of mud.
+Cr-r-r-ump! go the crumps searching out a battery. But oh the
+woods--the poor scarecrow woods. I was in a famous wood that looked
+positively devilish in its sinister nakedness. And it's September, too,
+when woods are so often at their loveliest. Not a leaf--not one single
+leaf; and, instead of undergrowth, just tossed earth, fuses, a boot, a
+coat, some wire, and above-ground dead men. Below-ground (or as far
+below as they can get in the time) live men.
+
+The Boche dug-outs are marvellous. They are really works of art. So
+solidly, even beautifully built. I went into one that had wooden pillars
+supporting the roof like some baronial hall, with neat little cupboards,
+tables, beds, and everything complete. There were two of our M.M.G.
+officers sleeping there, and we left them sleeping. But emerge out into
+daylight, and ye gods! the confusion makes you feel awed. A village is
+usually a heap of rubble, with here and there a bit of a gaudy enamelled
+coffee-pot or something; a geranium from a window, still growing; a
+china egg, a bit of a chair, a bit of an iron gateway. And as far as the
+eye can see in this particular region, just undulating stretches of
+tormented earth. All the old game of never showing above the parapet is
+quite disregarded, for often there is no parapet. Time after time the
+Huns could have seen us, and I saw lots of them running across gaps. You
+see, no sniping or anything like that can be organized yet. Huns often
+come into our lines by mistake, and we do likewise. And when you are not
+actually in close view of them, you go across the open. If you get cut
+off by a barrage you just wait till it's over.
+
+I have been round all our M.G. positions and other Detachments.
+
+
+_September 10._
+
+[Sidenote: TOWARDS FLERS]
+
+About 5 p.m. the mess cook came and said he had been unable to get
+enough food in for the morrow, as the expected hampers from England had
+not arrived, and the district was so packed with other troops. So we
+decided to get some hares or partridges. But it's forbidden to shoot
+game. Very well, we wouldn't shoot them. We'd ride them down. The
+country behind is entirely open. No hedges. Just gently undulating
+uplands. The crops are all cut. So three of us set out. The orderly-room
+work had almost been finished, and the remainder could wait. Jezebel was
+brought round for me, Chloe for Roger, and Minotaur for the Colonel. The
+Colonel's orderly, Corporal Orchard, following on Shotover. We rode back
+to the more open country where there are few troops, and then started
+the drive. Jezebel on the right, Chloe next, Shotover next, and Minotaur
+on the left, at intervals of 20 yards or so.
+
+It had been decided that, if a hare got up, even while we were after
+partridges, we must chase the hare.
+
+Well, presently a covey got up, and away we galloped up a long slope.
+Suddenly a wild tally-ho from Roger. A hare had got up and was lepping
+across Jezebel's line. So Jezebel fairly flattened herself out to keep
+the hare in. But the hare was across before she could get wide enough.
+
+Then the hare doubled back and we swung round, so that now Minotaur was
+on the right. Hooroosh down the hill. The hare was gaining. There was a
+minute brick enclosure a quarter of a mile ahead. The hare was making
+for that. And gained it. Check. We surrounded the enclosure and Corporal
+Orchard dismounted and went in. After about ten minutes out popped the
+hare on t'other side. Loud yells, and after her again. She made for some
+high ground where there was a small wood. "Cut her off," signalled the
+Colonel wildly.
+
+Impossible to cut off the hare. She gained the wood, which we
+surrounded. But, oh silly hare! she came out the other side. Minotaur
+after her like an arrow.
+
+Then she tried to get away across Jezebel's front. But Jezebel was too
+quick, and Chloe came up in support.
+
+Then the hare doubled again through Shotover and Minotaur, and we swung
+about. The hare was getting tired. She had run about three miles. She
+then doubled back again through Chloe and Jezebel.
+
+[Sidenote: CHASING THE HARE]
+
+But meanwhile the horses were all getting dark with sweat, and although
+a low line of upland hid us, we knew we were approaching some reserve
+wire. The hare must not gain that wire.
+
+She was dead beat and going very slow, flopping along, and looked as if
+she would tumble head over heels any second. We were close behind her.
+
+She got into some long grass 20 yards away from the wire, and
+disappeared from view. We had got her. Corporal Orchard dismounted and
+began beating the grass for her. There! Just missed her. She flopped on
+a few yards, and Corporal Orchard dashed after. Then he tripped and
+fell. The hare came out of cover and lolloped towards the wire. Yells
+from Roger and the Colonel.
+
+_And the hare got there first!_
+
+Inwardly I laughed with joy and relief. Thank goodness that little hare
+got away. Corporal Orchard took over the horses, and we went in amongst
+the wire, but we never found her. The weeds had grown tall, and were
+perfect cover for the poor wee beastie. I sometimes say what I think,
+but such views are naturally neither understood nor taken seriously.
+And the Major, bless him! likes me to do this type of thing because he
+thinks it is good for me. "We must really try and teach you to be more
+of a sportsman, you know. Sporting instinct. What? Every Englishman
+should have it!" This all very good-humouredly, and I answer, laughing:
+"Aha, sir. You see I know better." Which merely stirs some jovial spirit
+to stand up and propose: "Gentlemen, fox-hunting!" You see?
+
+
+_September 12._
+
+The next act will shortly begin. We are all very hopeful. Certain
+signs.... Fritz very nervous. Of that there can be no doubt at all.
+Prisoners betray it quite unwillingly. Poor Fritz! He comes to attention
+when we go up to him and ask him if he is fairly happy, which he is
+(with a smile) invariably. He talks good English, and wishes the war
+would end.
+
+Some of our machine gunners, including Clare, were done in the other
+day, and they put up a biscuit tin, with their names pierced in with
+nail holes, to mark the spot. This war is the quaintest, most
+incongruous show.
+
+
+[Illustration: GIRD TRENCH
+Gird Trench was only won after repeated attacks. It was the main German
+defence of GEUDECOURT. While this sketch was being made things
+were comparatively quiet. And the innumerable people living underground
+could get a little sleep.]
+
+
+_September 15._
+
+Zero hour has come and gone. The show is a peach. Fritz is scuttling
+back with us on his tail. We are to creep up, and as soon as Fritz
+is beyond his last line of trenches (which he jolly nearly is now) up
+and through we hope to go.
+
+
+_September 20._
+
+[Sidenote: TOWARDS GEUDECOURT]
+
+We are long past Fritz's first line; past his second line; at his third
+line; and his fourth line he is wildly digging now--places for his
+M.G.'s wire, etc. But he's very, very hard put to it. We have almost all
+the high ground. Our guns are at it day and night. Trench warfare no
+longer exists. A few hastily dug holes, a few short lines of trench,
+mostly battered to pieces, and that's all. It's almost open fighting.
+Even the infantry come up across the open. No communication trenches,
+nothing of that sort. The crump holes are continuous. There's scarcely
+an inch of ground that isn't a crump hole.
+
+I was up in an interesting wood this morning with the Colonel. Now, this
+will give you some idea of how dislocated and above-ground everything
+is:
+
+We wanted to go to a place the other side of the wood. When we reached
+the middle of the wood, where a new O.P. of ours has been established,
+Fritz put up a barrage on the edge of the wood. Very well, then. We just
+waited at the O.P. till the barrage was over, and then calmly walked
+out. The wood is only a few shattered stumps of trees, and the place
+where undergrowth once was is one continuous sea of earth thrown about
+in every conceivable shape, with dead Tommies and dead Fritzes lying
+side by side. So the wood isn't much cover, you can imagine.
+
+On the far side of the wood is beautiful rolling country, but not green.
+It's all brown, just a mess of earth. It's pitted with holes just like
+sand after a hailstorm. In the distance you can see real lovely trees,
+but nothing grows where the strafing is. Overhead the martins flicker
+and swoop, and starlings sail by in circling clouds, while the colossal
+noises crash and boom away merrily.
+
+Ought I, perhaps, not to talk of these things? Does it worry you to
+think of crumps bursting and so on? But, really, it seems quite ordinary
+and in the day's work here. Men talk of crumps as you would talk of
+bread and butter. That is, perhaps, why letters from home that talk
+about homely things--cows and lavender and the new chintz--are so
+welcome.
+
+Besides, good heavens! don't you know that there's not a man in France
+but knows that the best-beloved ones at home are having a far worse time
+than we are having here? Wet clothes? Mud? Shells a-bursting, guns
+a-popping? Even a wound, perhaps? Pish! No one _thinks_ at all out
+here. There isn't time. Most of the people out here are perfectly happy
+and merry, really. The sort of "long-drawn-out-agony" touch is, I think,
+rare.
+
+I'm writing this in a jolly Boche dug-out, all panelled and cosy.
+Jezebel and Swallow and a new pack mare I've got are in a valley that's
+hardly ever touched, and in fine, all's well.
+
+
+_September 24._
+
+[Sidenote: TEAR SHELLS]
+
+Tear shells or "lachrymatory shells." They haven't been putting many
+over lately, apparently. But they put some over the other day, and they
+are so amusing that I must describe them to you.
+
+The Colonel and I were up trying to find a "working-party" from the
+regiment. The regiment is sadly split up at present into various parties
+doing various jobs in various places, all unpleasant. Better than
+infantry work, but still unpleasant.
+
+We rode up much closer than we have ridden before, and left the
+Colonel's orderly and Hale in a bit of a valley with Minotaur, Jezebel,
+Hob, and Tank. Tank is a new mare I've got. Hale was riding her, as I
+never take Swallow closer than I can help.
+
+We dismounted in this small valley, and the Colonel's orderly and Hale
+were given orders to move if any shells were put over too near them.
+
+Then the Colonel and I went up through a wood that is just a few
+splintered stumps now.
+
+We passed behind several batteries, and I thought to myself: "Dash it
+all! I know my eyes can't be watering because of the noise. What the
+deuce is the matter? I hope the Colonel won't notice."
+
+However, on we waded and plodded. Suddenly the Colonel stopped, and
+exclaimed: "Oh damnation! This is perfect nonsense." His eyes were like
+tomatoes, and the tears were rolling down his cheeks!
+
+By this time we could hardly see at all, and it dawned on us that we
+must hastily put on our tear goggles, which we had never used before,
+but always, of course, carry. They go in the satchel along with the two
+gas helmets.
+
+Presently we met some infantry coming back, all safely begoggled. The
+Huns, they told us, were dropping tear shells just into that valley in
+front, where our working-party was supposed to be. You can tell them
+(the tear shells), they said, by the fluttering sound, and they knock up
+no earth and make very little smoke.
+
+Sure enough, as soon as we got over the brow there they were. They make
+a foolish wobbly, wavy sound as they come over, and look most innocent.
+So they are really if you get your goggles on in time. But if one bursts
+close to you, and you haven't got goggles on, why, then you'll be as
+blind as an owl, and you'll weep like a shower bath.
+
+[Sidenote: BETWEEN HIGH WOOD AND FLERS]
+
+Then the absurd thing was that we couldn't find the working-party.
+Plenty of dead Huns, but nobody alive. Not a sign. Only crumps dropping
+here and there and everywhere. So we found a bit of a trench that led
+back round the side of the wood. The front line trenches were only very
+lightly held, partly because they are almost completely blown in. And we
+could get no information as to the working-party at all.
+
+Presently we saw why. The Huns had put up a barrage across the valley
+they were coming up. We knew they would come up this other valley, as
+they had to report on their way to H.Q., ---- Division. So we got into a
+hole and waited.
+
+After about half an hour the barrage lifted and up came our
+working-party none the worse. It is a most amazing war. People literally
+dodge shells and things as you might dodge snow-balls.
+
+When we arrived back at the place where we left our two men, they also
+were not to be seen.
+
+After some time and anxious inquiries for two men with four horses, we
+at last discovered them nearly half a mile away. Fritz had put some
+heavy stuff over fairly near, and they had moved.
+
+"A very interesting bit of the line isn't it, Hale?" I said as we moved
+off. "Yes, sir," he said, adding with a fierce frown, "but not very
+_safe_, sir."
+
+And then we all laughed. Hale does frown so when he makes one of his
+oracular utterances.
+
+
+[Illustration: A HOUSE IN GEUDECOURT
+Here, as in many of these sketches, there are no people to be seen, for
+the simple reason that they are all underground in dug-outs.]
+
+
+_September 29._
+
+It's up to us to reconnoitre carefully every time there is a move
+forward, so as to see the new ground.
+
+One of the most curious and interesting things is this: the Boche rarely
+wastes. He only puts his crumps and pip-squeaks just where he thinks (or
+knows) our batteries are, and our infantry want to be, and our horses
+would be likely to be (if they weren't somewhere else). So that
+gradually you begin to track out safe routes. Don't go near the edge of
+---- Wood, but 200 yards inside the wood, on the north side, you're
+pretty comfy. Don't go near the mangled remains of ---- village, but
+keep to the right of it until you get to the wrecked aeroplane, and then
+turn down the remains of ---- trench, and you probably won't be touched.
+That sort of thing.
+
+[Sidenote: BOCHE DUG-OUTS]
+
+I've been sleeping in the most superb Boche dug-out. Very deep; I
+should think 30 feet down. The inside is pillared rather like the
+studio, and cretonned all over with maroon-coloured stuff instead of
+wall-paper. There are lovely little cupboards everywhere, and doors and
+window-frames just like a real house. The windows, of course, only look
+out on to an air-shaft, so it's very dark, and you have to have candles
+all the time. The windows have no glass, of course, as that would be
+shattered to smithereens by the vibrations. Then there's an arch and
+more steps down lower still, into the bedroom for two.
+
+Yesterday, being rather misty, I thought as follows:
+
+"It is too foggy to see what Fritz is doing. No attack is intended or
+expected. The Colonel is at corps H.Q. Swallow and Jezebel and Tank are
+safe in ---- valley. Roger is still here as Adjutant. Why not an
+afternoon off?"
+
+So picture a holiday-maker armed with a revolver, two gas helmets, tear
+goggles, some sandwiches, and a large empty haversack. Now where to go?
+What about ---- trench and all round ---- village, even, perhaps, a
+lightning five minutes in the village itself? We have just taken the
+village, but it's rather an unhealthy spot at present.
+
+---- trench is a new trench that poor Fritz dug just before he was
+driven out of it. I had seen lots of dead Fritzes there the day before.
+Also there were reports of curious things flung out into the mud in and
+round the village.
+
+[Sidenote: TROPHIES]
+
+So I set forth. And at ---- met another fellow I knew, and the affair
+became neither more nor less than a search for souvenirs. Here is a
+list:
+
+     1. A few buttons with double-tailed lions.
+
+     2. Four shoulder-straps with the figure 6 in red. This indicated a
+     division which has been opposite us for some time and is quite
+     exhausted, I think.
+
+     3. One haversack and one respirator haversack.
+
+     4. One rosary.
+
+     5. Five different sorts of bayonets from different regiments. These
+     I thought we might hang up.
+
+     6. Four tassels. They are worn by Fritz rather in the same sort of
+     way as lanyards are worn. Quite pretty, though rather soiled and
+     worn.
+
+     7. A bit of a wing of a crushed aeroplane that is lying on the
+     brown, feverish earth like a dead sea-gull.
+
+     8. A brass spring very beautifully made, that I am going to have
+     made into a bracelet for you. Also from the aeroplane.
+
+     9. A cardboard box for signal flares. _Signal Patronen_ they are
+     labelled. I threw the flares away, as they might go pop _en route_.
+
+     10. A jolly bit of gilded carving from a house in ----
+
+     11. Now then for No. 11! A bit of embroidery. I think it is a
+     vestment of sorts. It's white, and there's heavy gold embroidery at
+     the sides. It is a cloak of some description, but the top part,
+     where there should be a collar or something, is gone. Then
+     11A is a piece of black and silver embroidery. It was all
+     very muddy and riddled with shrapnel or bits of crump, so I just
+     cut off the only sound bit. Both these things are exceedingly
+     beautiful. They are probably vestments, because they were quite
+     near what must have been the church. I am sure it must have been
+     the church, although I hadn't a map--first, because I saw the
+     village in the distance some time ago, while the church was still
+     standing, and therefore I know the church's situation; and,
+     secondly, because I saw remains of large pillars, and a few bits of
+     what was once a font amongst the débris.
+
+There now. Isn't that a good haul! It's not easy to get anything worth
+sending home, because everything is so utterly smashed up.
+
+
+_October 2._
+
+Jezebel and Swallow and Tank have all been clipped trace high. I am
+getting rather attached to Tank. She is so modest and unselfish--a
+contrast to Jezebel. She never expects little treats, and seems quite
+surprised when I give her anything. Swallow and Jezebel always neigh
+when they see my electric torch coming towards them after dinner (while
+we are back in these safe places). But Tank is very shy of the light,
+and thinks it will bite her.
+
+Swallow is getting much better, and really seems to understand that the
+shells and guns and things probably won't hurt him. We have been most
+extraordinarily lucky. The troop that got through nearly to ---- the
+other day, hadn't a single casualty, although Dick's own mare was shot
+under him and a great many other horses were wounded. The squadron of
+---- were very badly scuppered, I fear. But, anyhow, we all feel that
+Lloyd George is right. We are just beginning to win.
+
+
+_October 5._
+
+It is a glorious day. Such clouds. Swallow kicked up his heels and
+played about like a kitten when Hunt took him to water this morning.
+It's extraordinary how used the horses are getting to trenches and
+wire, etc. At first they were rather afraid to jump these sudden deep
+ditches, but now they pop across like rabbits.
+
+
+_October 17._
+
+[Sidenote: ARCHIE]
+
+Yesterday some Hun aeroplanes got across and came right above this camp,
+a comfortable way behind the front line. Heavily strafed by our Archies.
+The blue sky was dotted all over with the pretty little white clouds of
+shrapnel.
+
+Sergeant Pritchard and I were standing close to Flannagan (one of the
+men's horses), and the men were at stables. We were all looking up and
+longing to see a Hun aeroplane hit, when suddenly "s-s-s-swish, plop!"
+just behind me. It was one of the Archie shrapnel cases. It buried
+itself deep in the ground 3 yards from where we were standing. We dug it
+up, and I'll bring it home for you. If it isn't too tediously heavy.
+
+Of course, Archie shrapnel cases all come down, and you see hundreds of
+them lying about; but I've never had one so close before. They sometimes
+fall broadside on, and sometimes end on, in which case they bury
+themselves fairly deep. All the Hun aeroplanes got away, alas!
+
+
+_October 26._
+
+Once more I'm going up to the strange dead village of ----. In many ways
+I shall be sorry to go back to comfort and billets, because the
+material for pictures here is very wonderful. You shall see several
+small things (the powers that be call it waste of time!), and it's
+infuriating to think that more can't be done.
+
+I tell you, if you were here, and if I could paint a bit every day, I
+should be quite happy. The "subjects" are endless, and in particular I
+long to do great big stretches of this bleak brown land. Well, it can't
+be helped, so it's no good thinking about it.
+
+
+_October 29._
+
+We are moving to a "back area" to-morrow.
+
+
+[Illustration: A WOUNDED TANK
+This Tank got hit as it was walking over a house in FLERS. They
+covered it up with tarpaulins to prevent the Hun aeroplanes from
+obtaining too much information about it. The black stuff is shrapnel.
+The pink clouds are sent up by crumps as they explode amongst the
+remains of the brick houses.]
+
+
+_November 1._
+
+It's a superb day, and we are back at ----, one of our old billets,
+right away from the beastliness. And although leave won't be for another
+week or two, still, it will come soon. And Swallow is in tremendous
+spirits.
+
+Here is a drawing done surreptitiously of a tank in full view of Fritz.
+You see those little stumps of trees? Well, I'll tell you what those are
+called when we meet, and also what village is just on their left. You
+may say it was stupid to sit in full view of Fritz, but it was the day
+after an advance, and there's hardly ever anything doing then in
+the way of sniping. The guns, of course, are all pooping off, but they
+weren't shelling just there, so it was quite safe. This drawing gives
+you some idea of the desolation, but none of the unevenness of the
+ground. You can't walk in a bee-line for three yards without getting
+into a hole. The last time I was in those parts, by the way, I came on a
+rather jolly cottage wineglass that had been thrown out into some soft
+mud, and was not even cracked.
+
+
+_November 6._
+
+[Sidenote: COCQUEREL]
+
+An extraordinary change. Let me now give you an idea.
+
+We are in a pretty little country village miles and miles away, and
+(although one of Fritz's aeroplanes flew over the church as bold as
+brass just before we got in) the quiet and peace of the place is very
+refreshing. And, droll to relate, I'm writing this in bed, with a touch
+of flu--such a bed, too, all soft and billowy. In ordinary life it would
+be condemned as a "feather" bed, but now it is a bed for princes.
+
+And the room. A rather dark old-fashioned paper, an old clock ticking,
+an old shining chest of drawers with a marble top, and clothes hanging
+on pegs. Hale has arranged the pistol, and ammunition, and maps, and
+gas helmets, and steel helmet, and spare kit, with great elaboration,
+all over the room. At the present moment he is "sweeping out" with the
+appropriate hissing noises. The dust will, I hope, subside during the
+course of the day.
+
+Hunt has got Jezebel, Swallow, and Tank into a disused barn, where they
+will be warm and happy.
+
+Out of the window I can see hens pecking in an orchard, and an old grey
+pony browsing. The leaves are yellow, and there's no wind.
+
+The old man and the old lady to whom the cottage belong have brought me
+in some little "remèdes," which Tim refuses to let me have. One is what
+the old man (an ex-chemist) calls "salicite de métal," and the other is
+what the old lady calls a "remède de bonne femme." You rub yourself with
+it all over every two hours!
+
+Tick, tick, tick, tick. Lovely! The old clock is rumbling. It is about
+to strike twelve.
+
+It has struck twelve--no, not struck twelve, rather it has buzzed
+twelve, like some old happy bee.
+
+The hens are still pecking about in the orchard, and the grey pony is
+rubbing himself against a tree.
+
+All so cosy and delicious. Now for a doze.
+
+
+_November 7._
+
+[Sidenote: DOZING]
+
+Here's a poem. It's called
+
+HENS.
+
+    At the end of the war
+            (Ring, bells, merry bells!)
+              We intend
+            To keep hens,
+              Me and Helen.
+            (Ring, bells!)
+              Such hens!
+            (Merry bells!)
+    And though all our hens' eggs be surrounded by shells,
+    We shall laugh and not care;
+    For there won't be no war,
+    And no hell any more,
+    While Helen is there
+    With the hens.
+
+I've just made that up, and the inspiration of so profound an epic has
+made me want to doze again. Such a lot of dozing!
+
+
+_November 12._
+
+In to-day's letter I enclose a couple of field post-cards which I found
+on a Boche dug-out bed-hole.
+
+I've been so busy these last days, up till late hours, and writing has
+been "na-poo." Leave? Yes, leave will come in time. Probably the first
+half of December.
+
+How maddening it is for poor old Tom! It's most damnable hard luck being
+kept there without leave such a long time. And I expect that he also
+has rather lost interest. At first the men were a great source of
+interest, and the horses and everything. Then France and the front were
+very interesting. Lastly, being under fire was very interesting. But now
+that we are back in Rest, I begin to feel I shall be rather sorry to go
+through it again. And Tom has had so much of it. Yes, he ought to come
+home.
+
+The cottage people here have those lovely pale salmon winter
+chrysanthemums in their gardens. Don't you like them?
+
+Since we arrived in this wee village a week ago, I haven't been on a
+horse once, and have never seen anything outside the village itself,
+which consists of one street and a side-lane.
+
+
+_November 14._
+
+I wasn't able to write yesterday, and there may be several blank days to
+come.
+
+Roger is temporarily away, and I am in charge. The thing that's
+happening is this: A and B are coming down to us, and others are going
+to relieve them. So the arrangements and correspondence are vast. All
+the billeting of this town is pushed on to my hands, too; and though
+it's only a small village, there's a good lot to do. I can't collect any
+thoughts to write to you. You understand, I know, and so I needn't say
+more. I'll write again at length when things settle down. This sounds
+muddled. But I count on your understanding that I've got more work to do
+than I can manage.
+
+
+_November 16._
+
+[Sidenote: THE OTHER SQUADRONS ARRIVE]
+
+To-day, by some amazing fluke, there's a lull. One squadron has gone.
+Sir John is on his way down. Julian starts early next week, and Gerald a
+few days later. So within a fortnight we shall all be together. Which
+will be good.
+
+Some infantry came in from the line to-day. Oh ye gods! the British
+infantry! No rewards, honours, no fame, can ever be enough for them. We
+have not yet gone through what they have to go through, but we have been
+in and out amongst them all the time, and we know. Thank goodness this
+spell of dry weather seems to have come for a few days at least. Cold at
+night is nothing. It's wet at night that just kills men right and left.
+Alan died yesterday morning. Died of exposure. He caught a chill while
+we were up in front, and then got much worse, and it finally developed
+into peritonitis and pneumonia. And now he, too, is dead. We were all
+very fond of Alan.
+
+Death is such a little thing. A change of air--no more. Death is the
+last day of Term, the last day of the Year. Regret? That's because we
+don't understand, quite.
+
+
+_November 17._
+
+I sent you off another beastly little scrap of paper to-day, because it
+was impossible to write more. Here (7 p.m.) is another moment, so I
+snatch it.
+
+Listen. Of course it is true that leave has been cancelled, but we hear
+(Rumour) that this is only for a few days owing to submarines. _If_
+leave reopens again, as seems likely therefore, I go next. I shall have
+to hand over Orderly Room and all current correspondence, etc. That
+means, with luck, I leave here on the 2nd. Don't, of course, count on
+this; but let's toy with the idea.
+
+
+_November 23._
+
+I am sitting in the sun, having read your letter. The valley of the ----
+is below me, a mile wide, all reed-beds and half submerged willows, with
+the main stream lying like a blue snake amongst pale acres of sedge.
+
+Damn! I was going to write a long and cosy letter, but was called back.
+I had escaped for an hour from Orderly Room with your letter and a
+sketchbook, and was caught in the act. No time now.
+
+
+_November 25._
+
+[Sidenote: THE SOMME VALLEY]
+
+A few more moments with you before you go to bed.
+
+Yes, isn't it funny how we seem to be talking face to face! And to every
+question of mine you reply in three days' time and _vice versa_. It
+always sounds to me like this, rather:
+
+              QUESTION.         ANSWER.
+
+    _Mon._   Isn't it cold?             None.
+    _Tues._  Have you seen mother?      None.
+    _Wed._   Are you happy?             None.
+    _Thurs._ How are you all?           Freezing.
+    _Fri._   When did I see you last?   Only yesterday.
+    _Sat._   May I have a cake!         Yes, very.
+    _Sun._   How is Queen Anne?         Much better.
+    _Mon._   None.                      Last April.
+    _Tues._  None.                      I'll send one.
+    _Wed._   None.                      Dead.
+
+Don't you find it's a bit like that? What question can I have asked a
+week ago to which the answer is a rabbit? So tiresome when we want to
+talk at very close range.
+
+As to leave--well let's not talk about that. Every dog has his day.
+
+You know the dog who has been shut up in a kennel for a long time? Or
+the dog who has been locked up in an empty house for a long time? It'll
+be a mixture of these.
+
+Well, the day will come.
+
+
+_November 27._
+
+Can't write properly because it's very cold and I've been riding, and
+that makes one's fingers like pink bananas. They don't seem to answer to
+the bridle. There's an awful noise of hissing going on. Hale and Hunt
+are busy on the horses.
+
+
+_November 28._
+
+A box will arrive containing another Bristol ball, which I discovered in
+a cottage here, and bought for 1fr. 50c. Rather a jolly green one,
+biggish. Also I am enclosing the wineglass from Geudecourt, which I
+mentioned some time ago. There can't be any harm in mentioning this
+name, as we have left that area some time now. I have got several
+sketches of other places round about there, which I hope you will like.
+Won't it be fun, when the time comes, looking at them. To-day Hunt came
+round in a great state about the horses. Jezebel had pulled up her
+shackle, and was in "one of her moods," as Hunt always describes it. She
+had been kicking both Tank and Swallow with great violence. He had left
+Hale trying to get her quiet, and rushed up to report.
+
+She was quiet again when I got down, and Hale had tied her up
+successfully.
+
+[Sidenote: THE PRUDENT SERGEANT]
+
+But the point of telling you of this episode is that meanwhile it was
+getting time for the post to go. Prudent Sergeant Marsden (Orderly Room
+sergeant) observed that I hadn't addressed the letter yet or signed it
+outside. So he did it himself! "You very seldom write any letters to
+other addresses, you see, sir, so I thought I'd better address it
+myself. I thought it would be _inadvisable_ to miss a post, and I
+thought the young lady would forward it on if it was not for her!"
+
+It made me laugh as I haven't laughed for a long time. Wasn't it nice
+and thoughtful. He tells me he duly forged my signature in the left-hand
+bottom corner.
+
+Jorrocks sends his love. "Your little filly" he always calls you.
+
+
+_November 29._
+
+About leave. There's no more chance of it at present, I think, as we are
+going up to the line again in a week or two, and we want to work off all
+the men, who haven't had any leave at all, before moving up mudwards,
+when all leave will be stopped. We are engaged at present in
+practically rebuilding and making sanitary an entire French village, and
+in "training," which means all the old dismal tedium of manoeuvres
+plus spit and polish.
+
+These villages are most amazingly ill-built. Swallow this morning lashed
+out on being bitten by Jezebel, and (dear silly Swallow!) instead of
+hitting Jezebel, she brought down half the wall of the shed in which
+they live, which frightened her to such an extent, Hunt tells me, that
+she allowed Jezebel to eat all her food at midday stables.
+
+
+_November 30._
+
+We move next week, I think, or possibly the week after.
+
+We are not going back to quite the same part of the line, but near it.
+It will be new country to me altogether, and to everyone else concerned.
+
+Poor Swallow, poor Jezebel, poor Tank, I'd give anything to shelter you
+three; but, alas! I fear you are going to have a nasty time of it now.
+All clipped, too. It's Swallow particularly that I tremble for. He does
+so throw up the sponge. Tank copies Bird in everything, so she ought to
+pull through all right.
+
+
+_December 1._
+
+[Sidenote: AMIENS CATHEDRAL]
+
+All leave is cancelled again, at any rate in this army--possibly on
+account of the move, possibly on account of nasty fish in the sea.
+However, the telegram says "until further notice," which usually means
+for a short time only. Not that it affects me, but it's bad luck on some
+of the men who were just off.
+
+Now about Xmas. I have got a new crop, thank you ever so much, that I
+bought at a town near here.
+
+A beautiful cathedral town.
+
+With doors all padded up with sand-bags, the great cathedral towers
+above the town, and is seen for miles and miles. A good effort. What fun
+they must have had building it. What they believed then they expressed
+in outward and visible form. What we think now is (or ought to be) very
+different indeed from what they thought then. But I can't remember
+having ever seen anything that _begins_ to express what we think (or
+ought to think) now.
+
+Everyone in the Church of England now seems to me to think _almost
+exactly_ what was thought when this cathedral was built! If this war
+achieves nothing else, I pray with all my mind, and all my soul, and all
+my strength, that all the sects and all the churches may suddenly feel
+tired of all the 1001 little methods of procedure, and say: "Damn it
+all! what does all this ancient paraphernalia mean to us? Is God quite
+so complicated and involved as we have supposed? Everything else in the
+world progresses. Thought progresses. Let us take a deep breath, and
+realize that religion ought to be more 'into the future' than even
+Zeppelins or Tanks, please."
+
+
+[Illustration: EXPLOSION OF AN AMUNITION DUMP
+The smoke from a large explosion usually assumes a queer tree-like form
+and disperses slowly.]
+
+
+_December 2._
+
+Just been superintending the burying of some horses. A curious job. You
+have to disembowel them first. Quite ghoulish. And then head and legs
+are cut off, and the whole is buried in a hole 12 feet deep. Up there
+they often lie about for some time, and get as smelly as dead human
+beings. Back here it all has to be done prestissimo.
+
+The strange thing is that, whereas before the war I should have felt
+sick and possibly dreamt about it, now it seems merely more boring than
+most other things of the kind.
+
+Up there Tommies and Honourables eat their lunch of sandwiches with lots
+and lots of dead people in varying stages of decomposition all round. An
+odour more hideous than anything you have ever imagined. But you get
+used to it.
+
+[Sidenote: TALKING ABOUT HOME]
+
+"How unpleasant they are to-day," you say to anyone you are with.
+And the answer is probably just a laugh. Then you go on (if things are
+quiet) to discuss an imaginary day at home. You would smile.
+
+We actually discuss everybody's clothes, the things in the room, the
+shape of the fireplace, the look of the tea-things and the comfiness of
+the chairs.
+
+And we always end up by saying: "And then after that I shall do
+absolutely _Nothing_ for a fortnight!"
+
+
+_December 3._
+
+December. Frost on the trees, all fairy-like in this dense mist. Not a
+sound. The sun quite small and white and far away. And if we were on the
+Cotswolds, I expect we should go out for a bit of a walk, just to warm
+up, after breakfast.
+
+
+_December 4._
+
+A staff job has been in the air several days. It may or may not come
+off. I'm not very keen about it in many ways. But I've a feeling that I
+could do it rather well, and so I'm not sure that I oughtn't to accept.
+
+Jezebel and Swallow have quarrelled. Isn't it awful. Hunt has had to
+put Tank in between them.
+
+Jezebel kicked Swallow, and the blood fairly spouted out--got her in the
+leg, and she lost her temper, and began lashing out. Hunt, with great
+presence of mind, threw a bucket of water over them both. And as soon as
+they were quiet, dear, good, demure little Tank was put in between them
+as buffer.
+
+It's a most dreadful nuisance. They used to get on so well together. I
+hope they will leave that curious little Tank alone. Swallow is as lame
+as a cat now. The accursed female is very exasperating, I fear. Hunt
+quite irritated me for a moment when he remarked, after the incident:
+"Oh, it's all right, sir. She was in one of her moods." I pointed out to
+him that it was not all right. Whereupon he took it into his head that I
+was strafing him, and muttered sulkily: "Well, sir, I must say I never
+did like Abroad."
+
+Which made me laugh to such an extent that I got a sort of fit of
+laughing (don't you know?) and couldn't stop. Eventually I had to go
+away. He looked so comic and so dejected, and his use of the word Abroad
+(as if it were a country in itself) always makes me laugh idiotically. I
+haven't seen him since, and it will be difficult to explain the apparent
+frivolity.
+
+Things have been very complicated just lately owing to our having to
+make arrangements about taking over this new bit of line.
+
+
+_December 5._
+
+[Sidenote: CONCERNING WORK]
+
+One of the many things the war has taught us, I think, is the
+comparative equality of all work. Work depends almost entirely on the
+actual number of hours per diem, don't you think?
+
+Certainly brain work is more tiring than spade work. But I'll guarantee
+that the man who does eight hours' brain work is not _much_ more tired
+than the man who does eight hours' spade work.
+
+The only difference is that open-air work means better health, and
+consequently more power to work long hours.
+
+But I really do believe that, for example, a nurse's day's work (either
+for wounded or babies) is _just_ as hard as a bricklayer's day, or a
+bank clerk's day, or an engine driver's day. And I believe that the
+various degrees of skill, necessary for doing any job really well, are
+not very different on the whole. Different, yes, but not very different.
+A General's job is difficult, but not _much_ more difficult than a
+nurse's job.
+
+And so I believe all jobs ought to be paid on a rather more equal
+footing. Not on an equal footing, but a _rather more equal_ footing
+than now.
+
+Do you agree?
+
+
+_December 6._
+
+Cathedrals, the earth, the sky, and all that in them is--those are the
+things that rest and soothe one out here. Thank God for cathedrals! How
+splendid of Litlin, to be getting Bunny taught reels. I do trust she
+will give lots of attention to it.
+
+After seeing a certain amount of human misery and so forth, I believe
+more than ever that the whole aim of the world is in the direction of
+Joy. And as dancing is one of the most primitive expressions of joy,
+give me dancing, says I.
+
+This is all said in the middle of dictation of orders, and so I expect
+it's ungrammatical, but you know what I mean.
+
+
+_December 7._
+
+What do you think? I lunched to-day with George. We lunched in a most
+superb officers' club, formerly the house of some Count or other: all
+white and gold, and chandeliers and mirrors--a dream.
+
+
+_December 8._
+
+[Sidenote: JEZEBEL ACCEPTS AN APOLOGY]
+
+Our move has been postponed twice now, and we don't go till Monday.
+
+But meanwhile I heard from Mark to-day. He is A.D.C. to the G.O.C., and
+apparently caught sight of Roger and me the other day, while flashing
+past in the G.O.C.'s car. So we are going to have a great meeting. It
+will be immense fun. Mark, Dennis and I were all tremendous
+friends--just the same type.
+
+Swallow is much better, and Jezebel says that, if she had known Swallow
+would bleed so much, she would have kicked him in a different place,
+where he wouldn't have bled so profusely. This, for Jezebel, is
+extremely gracious.
+
+Tank's only remark about being put between the two was: "Well, I'm
+always very glad to do what I'm told."
+
+Swallow is desperately sorry about the whole affair, and is on
+tenter-hooks lest Jezebel should never speak to him again. He says she
+really didn't mean to kick, and she can't understand how it is that he
+has so little control over himself. So all's well.
+
+
+_December 9._
+
+Hunt and Hale have made their very tumble-down barn a perfect model of
+neatness. They sleep within about 3 yards of the horses' heels. Hunt in
+particular never likes to be far away from "my 'osses," as he calls
+them. I have less and less say in the matter of the 'osses as time goes
+on! I merely say: "Hunt, I want a horse and an orderly at 8 a.m.
+to-morrow."
+
+It's useless for me to say I'd like Swallow or Tank or Jezebel, because,
+if I name one in particular, there's always some reason why it would be
+better not to ride that one that day. Oh, "she wants shoeing behind,"
+or, "she had one of her moods this morning, and so I exercised her very
+early," or "he didn't eat his corn, and had better stay in." So I just
+meekly ask for a horse. And a horse arrives.
+
+Swallow is still rather lame, but seems better now. And the gentle
+influence of Tank is, I really believe, soothing Jezebel. Tank is a very
+charming creature, and her perfect manners are a good example to the
+other two. But--what an awful admission!--she is so good that I own I
+find her rather dull. Poor little Tank!
+
+Jorrocks has gone off to a nasty place, I fear, with his troop. But all
+seems fairly quiet at present.
+
+
+_December 12._
+
+The trek is at an end.
+
+We have arrived at a place well behind the line, and not at all
+wrecked, except for holes here and there. But the river! Oh my aunt!
+It's marvellous. It winds in and out of low hills, and as I saw it this
+evening, from an eminence, it looked more snaky than ever. Huge great
+loops with the lovely pale sedges on either side. The almost yellow
+hills are dotted with junipers. I long to see it to-morrow morning.
+There's no doubt it's one of the most fascinating rivers I've seen.
+Hooded crows sailing over the uplands, and I met a flock of bright sweet
+goldfinches near some guns, and a tree-creeper in a copse.
+
+[Sidenote: SAILLY-LE-SEC]
+
+What a wonderful day! It was snowing all the time, with quite warm,
+sunny intervals. Swallow and Tank and Jezebel are all under cover, and
+I've actually got a bed! You might not call it a bed, but it is a bed,
+because it has four legs (one of them a biscuit tin). The place where we
+were going to has been rather too heavily strafed lately, so they are
+keeping us back here.
+
+Things are wonderfully quiet, and there are no batteries near us, which
+is pleasant. I did want to show you the beautiful river winding in and
+out of the little hills. The great river-bed is quite untouched by
+shells here, and the very sight of it would soothe the most jangled
+nerves. Oh, it did look so heavenly this evening. Thank God for this
+glorious river. The snow melted as it fell. The snow flakes as they
+touched the river were like fairies taking headers.
+
+
+_December 15._
+
+Isn't this fine about Peace?
+
+So Fritz would like Peace, would he? No amount of flamboyant talk can
+possibly hide the fact that he wants peace. And it isn't the victor who
+asks for peace first. Carry on, say we.
+
+
+_December 20._
+
+Have you had any of the letters in which I told you how the place we
+were to have been sent to was too continuously strafed? And how we were
+sent to this very quiet and unwrecked place? And how I've got a bed, and
+how happy the horses are?
+
+About the intelligence job. Things are hanging fire rather, as the Staff
+Major, who may ask for me to come away with him to another corps, is now
+attached to this corps. So what will be the end of it I don't know.
+
+Frankly, I am sore tempted for this reason, that I think I could do it
+rather well. Of course, each corps does things differently, but, judging
+from the way in which this corps likes the job done, I feel certain I
+could tackle it in another corps. That's boasting. But you understand
+so perfectly. It would be glorious to be doing something really well.
+
+[Sidenote: A STAFF JOB]
+
+I _can't_ be an ordinary soldier. Too absent-minded--hopelessly vague
+and careless. I live on tenter-hooks always. What detail have I
+forgotten? What order did I give that could be taken two ways?
+
+It's sad for Pat that his friends are gone. I feel so murky when mine
+go, that I understand what it must be for him. But friends or no
+friends, broken-hearted or whole, we must damned well carry on! And
+that's all about it.
+
+A perfect letter from old Norman to-day. He must be quite useless as a
+soldier, whereas at his own job he stands alone, with a wonderful future
+before him. Well, well! I meant not to grouse to you again. And here's a
+letter nearly full of it. But there, I made a stupid mistake to-day, and
+it's all so boring and beastly.
+
+Anyhow, we are fighting for civilization, and the Huns are, too, in a
+way. But our idea of civilization is better than the Huns' idea. So we
+gradually win.
+
+
+_December 21._
+
+I have at last made up my mind. I'm going to take on this job. How
+unwillingly I can hardly tell you. I wanted to be in the great Push
+next year so badly. Everyone, everything, is preparing for it. The
+cavalry will get through, and I shall be driving about behind in some
+gilded car, or watching from some very distant hill with Jezebel (who
+won't care a damn whether the cavalry get through or not).
+
+But I had two interviews with the Major and the General to-day. Coves
+like painters seem to be rather wanted, and--well, it's clear now. I
+must go.
+
+To-morrow or next week, perhaps, the extreme fascination of the job will
+obliterate a certain feeling of flatness, of disappointment, of ... of
+... of shirking. Yes, that's it: I feel as if I were shirking all the
+horrors. You see, I shall enjoy this job immensely. All the hateful
+"arrangering things" for large numbers of men, all the tiresome
+formalities, all the discomfort, all the future dangers, finished
+with--over. I don't say that we've had _long_ periods of danger or
+_much_ discomfort; but we've had quite enough to make a very ordinary
+mortal hope never to go through it again.
+
+But to think that I've deliberately chosen the easy path. Well, I don't
+care! I've chosen it. I meant to choose it. I'm glad I've chosen it.
+That is the one job in the whole war that I could do really well. How
+best to serve the country--that's the only question. So there you are.
+I've been and took the plunge, and I believe I'm right.
+
+First of all a week or two getting to know the ropes in _this_ corps,
+and then off with the Major and the General to another corps.
+
+My aunt! what an egoistical letter this is. However, to you no
+apologies.
+
+
+_December 22._
+
+[Sidenote: A DECISION]
+
+Letters have been lurching in, in threes and fours. But what matters it
+how they come? I always know that they are coming. And the future's
+where _my_ heart is always. So here's to the letters to come, and here's
+to our meeting again, and here's to Life--long, sweet, glorious Life.
+
+We shall see the Christmas roses of the Cotswolds together one day, and
+I think the war will have given them a mysterious loveliness that we
+never understood before. Every year they'll come up out of the ground
+again and surprise us. I shall be getting older and older--and so will
+you, too. And all our little plans will have a quiet, peaceful joy for
+us that wouldn't have been possible but for the war. Art will be like
+angels coming and going. Effort will be intensified. The lives of the
+poor must be happier, because everyone will be more ready to give and
+take.
+
+It won't come all at once. But there'll be a difference. The war will
+have made a difference. Thank God for the war!
+
+
+_December 25._
+
+[Sidenote: CHRISTMAS 1916]
+
+Never talk about the "idle" staff. Yesterday we were working absolutely
+solid without any break at all except an hour for lunch and an hour for
+dinner (tea? away frivolous thought!) from 9 a.m. till 11.30 p.m. Most
+interesting; but let's hope this first day's experience won't be a fair
+sample, or I shall simply melt down like a guttered candle. None of the
+Generals and people seemed to think it unusual. At least they never said
+so. Personally I found it quite kolossal.
+
+
+_12.30 a.m._
+
+Such a funny Christmas Day! I've been fixing on a large map all the gun
+positions on the corps front. There are a very great many, and the
+positions must be marked very exactly. I was quite nervous lest there
+should be a mistake. It has taken since about two o'clock till now. And
+I think it is accurate at last.
+
+At about 10 p.m. I found out an awful mistake. One of the heavies quite
+100 yards wrong, which might have meant that it would be ranging on the
+wrong place, and probably do no damage whatever. Desperate thought!
+
+Well, the staff is the most hard-working body of men I've ever seen.
+They don't appear ever to get any exercise. And, really, the work is all
+so vital that I don't see how they ever can expect to get any exercise.
+
+About leave. Possibly on the way up to the other corps a side-slip to
+Blighty will be allowed.
+
+Don't depend on anything. There seems to be a dearth of people who can
+do this work, and so it would be unwise to count on getting away. The
+thing is, however, conceivable--that is all.
+
+
+_December 27._
+
+First of all about current affairs here.
+
+Captain G---- is probably going to Army, so it is suggested that I shall
+take his place here. He runs all the plotting of the aeroplane
+photographs, etc., for the corps. It's a most awful and alarming
+responsibility, and I don't feel that I can do it yet. May he not get
+taken away just for a little while, or I'm lost.
+
+The corps commander sends for him (he has been doing the job for nine
+months), and says: "Now, where is our line at the present moment? Has
+so-and-so trench been repaired, and where is so-and-so German battery
+that was shelling the ---- Brigade yesterday?" Well, of course I simply
+couldn't answer these questions yet.
+
+The prospect is murky. Given a little time, I think I could do it; but
+... well, one can but try.
+
+I asked the Captain if he thought leave at all possible. He most
+strongly advised me not to dream of asking. The corps is certain to
+refuse in any case, as they will want me to sweat up the show and get to
+know all about it as rapidly as possible.
+
+
+_January 2, 1917._
+
+I think I shall be going to live with the R.F.C., so as to be able to
+snatch their photographs the instant they come in--puzzle them out--put
+them quickly on to a map--and send them off. Everyone then will know far
+more quickly what Fritz is up to.
+
+So don't be surprised if letters are addressed from R.F.C. shortly. I
+shall take a couple of draughtsmen and a clerk and an orderly, and Hale.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE BUTTE DE WARLENCOURT
+This small chalk mound was one of the most difficult obstacles on the
+way to BAPAUME. In the foreground a large 'crump-hole' and the
+remains of a little copse.]
+
+
+_January 11._
+
+[Sidenote: AEROPLANE PHOTOGRAPHS]
+
+I don't know when leave will be possible. This job is rather in the
+making, and is really very important stuff. A great responsibility,
+says the corps commander. In fact, I am just a bit nervous about
+things generally. That battery that was reported in so-and-so wood. Is
+it there still? Well, where has it moved to, then? You are not sure? Why
+not? No recent photographs of it? But why not? Can it be in so-and-so
+quarry, perhaps? That light railway has been repeatedly smashed up by
+our heavies. Repaired? What? What evidence have you? Let me have a map
+as soon as possible, showing exactly where you believe that line has
+been repaired, and the exact position of that battery in the quarry--if
+it really is there. But don't tell me it's in the quarry unless you are
+quite sure. Yes, sir. And you'd better have the map duplicated. How many
+can the draughtsmen print before to-morrow? About 300. Well, send out
+copies. I must have that battery silenced at once. Do you see? Can I
+rely on it being sent out in time? Yes, sir.
+
+That's the sort of thing. Things that _must_ be done and quickly.
+Perhaps it sounds nothing much--a mere bit of a map. But maps are like
+lamps to men in the dark. And they must be accurate. To me, therefore,
+the most inaccurate, absent-minded mortal before the war that ever
+breathed, it is all a source of great anxiety.
+
+
+_January 12._
+
+I've got a bedroom with a brick floor in a cottage. I really hardly know
+what it's like, as I arrive there about twelve o'clock every night and
+fall into bed, and then up again at 7.30 next morning as a rule, and
+frowsy at that. The roads here are just as muddy as ever, and if you go
+off the roads you go too deep. We are camouflaging the whole place, and
+I think it will soon be very difficult for the Huns to see it. At least,
+when I say "we" are camouflaging, I mean that I run out for two minutes
+about every three hours, and give hurried directions to a few bewildered
+men, and rush in again. I'm sure they think the extraordinary patterns
+that I order them to paint all over the huts, etc., are quite mad. The
+R.F.C. show isn't ready yet, but it's likely to be so shortly.
+
+
+_January 17._
+
+To-day's letter got me into an absurd fit of internal laughter. Hale
+brought it in while I was poring over some new photographs of Boche
+emplacements, or dug-outs, or something--poring with a magnifying
+glass.... And then came your drawings of the rooms at the cottage.
+
+That'll be admirable. I tried to hold my head and think of exactly how
+the cottage looked, and where the new rooms were to be; but somehow I've
+got no brains left. And I leave it all to you. One day we shall be able
+to discuss it peaceably, but at present this brain is like some limp
+jellyfish floating in the sea.
+
+To-day I'm doing a map, and the draughtsmen are copying it, of some
+Boche dug-outs. Ye gods! what do I care about dug-outs! As well make
+maps of all the rabbit-holes in Glamorganshire. But there, what's the
+good of talking like that. It's got to be done.
+
+
+_January 24._
+
+[Sidenote: BUSY DAYS]
+
+The aeroplanes have brought in the most marvellous photographs, and I am
+very busy deciphering them and mapping the information on to a map.
+
+
+_February 8._
+
+After many, many days of incessant work comes a brief interval of
+repose--till to-morrow morning.
+
+We moved up here yesterday afternoon late.
+
+Well, imagine a lovely large hut.
+
+The room on the left is where all the maps, etc., are made, and the
+room on the right is my office.
+
+But outsiders can't just barge into my office. Oh no! They must ask one
+of the orderlies if they can see me. Isn't it ridiculous!
+
+Then there is a tiny bedroom.
+
+The office walls are entirely covered now with aeroplane photos and
+maps. It is all rather fun, and I think it won't be quite such a strain.
+The cold is intense. Hale is functioning with the stove in my room at
+the moment. I have said once that I don't really need a fire in my
+bedroom; but he evidently has different views, and is firmly lighting
+it. He is quite happy here.
+
+I'm having the hut papered, to make it warmer. And canvas curtains, if
+you please!
+
+The R.F.C. people are most hospitable and nice. I like them very much.
+It's all quite interesting, and the aeroplanes are delicious as they
+move, buzzing like vast mosquitoes.
+
+I go down in a side-car every day (that's the programme) to corps H.Q.
+to report and get instructions.
+
+
+_February 12._
+
+Something may happen to prevent leave before leave comes. You will
+understand. I should have to "remain at my post," as novels say.
+
+
+_February 15._
+
+[Sidenote: WITH THE R.F.C.]
+
+A very difficult map has just been finished, and is being printed, and
+here we sit down for a little talk together. The war is for the moment
+far away. Away anxiety, away nervous apprehension, away fatigue, away
+responsibility, away Wilhelm! Let the doors be shut, the curtains drawn.
+Listen. An adventure, amusing, and rather exciting. Would you like to
+hear about it? Well, I was making a raised map of a particular part of
+the line for the corps commander. And I go up from time to time to scan
+the ground, so that it may be very accurate and therefore rather useful.
+At least that is what I hope. Yesterday, then, up into the blue, piloted
+by Eric.
+
+It was not a good day. In fact, too dud for good observation. But the
+relief map must be ready quickly.
+
+Imagine us, please, robed in leather coats and leather helmets and
+gauntlets, and with goggles, waiting at the entrance of a hangar while
+the mechanics bring out the gadfly. They have already looked the
+creature over with great care. The pale yellow wings glitter against the
+violet horizon. The sun is shining, but it's freezing hard. Eric climbs
+in, and then I do. I sit behind with the machine gun.
+
+I clasp a sketchbook, to sketch the lie of the land. O my aunt in
+Jericho! isn't it Arctic! Fingers that feel like ammoniated quinine. You
+know, a faint unpleasant tingle.
+
+They are starting the engines. Difficult this cold weather. The
+following strange colloquy ensues:
+
+    _Mechanic:_ "Contact."
+    _Pilot:_ "Contact."
+    _M._ "Switch off."
+    _P._ "Switch off."
+    _M._ "Contact."
+    _P._ "Contact."
+    _M._ "Switch off."
+    _P._ "Suck in."
+    _M._ "Contact."
+    _P._ "Contact."
+
+And with a terrific whir the propeller flashes round. The sound
+increases, and then decreases slightly, and increases again. The gadfly
+moves. Moves more rapidly. Skims along the ground. Rises, rises, rises.
+Ah, the beautiful river! Every time I have flown the beauty of that
+river catches me in the throat. But this featureless waste. Bereft of
+everything but earth, and a few low shelters and gun-pits, and seamed
+with trenches. Hideously lonely.
+
+Well, anyhow, here we are sailing high above it all, the wind
+occasionally lifting one of the wings, and then the other, like a
+sea-gull's. There is a haze, and it's not easy to see. You peer over the
+edge, and behold at last the desired wood.
+
+[Sidenote: A SCRAP IN THE AIR]
+
+A wood? That? Good heavens! That poor miserable mess of splinters and
+gashed soil? Each time I see one of the woods destroyed by this war I
+thank God that our glorious Cotswold woods are still untouched.
+Primroses, wood-anemones, squirrels. To think of squirrels!... Not
+another aeroplane in sight. Neither our own nor Hun machines. Eric
+circles smoothly round above the wood, and then crosses back over
+no-man's-land to fly low, so that I can see the wood obliquely. Archie
+quite wide of his mark. This doubling and circling perplexes him. The
+sketch progresses. I look round from time to time to see that there are
+still no Huns about. Eric also looks about. No: nothing in sight. The
+guns are pooping off, but the noise of the engines makes the guns sound
+like tiny little "pops." There, now I've nearly done. Lucky I came,
+because the wood isn't quite what we thought. Yes, that'll do.... We are
+up at a considerable height....
+
+Suddenly Rat-tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat! above our heads. Three
+Hun aeroplanes right on top of us; Eric drives headlong in a spiral
+curve at full speed, smoke trailing out behind. The gun! I fumble.
+Can't get round to it. Damn!
+
+Rat-tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat! go the Huns. But Eric is faster. Are
+they all Huns, though? Shall I fire? Yes. No. They daren't come down low
+over our lines. We are safe. Yes, look, they were all Huns. They hang
+about far up aloft. The Hun usually hunts in threes. Why, oh why, didn't
+I fire? Well, it can't be helped now. Eric looks round. We both laugh.
+"Why didn't you fire?" he shouts. I can't hear what he says, but I know
+from the shape of his mouth that's what he is saying. I just smile and
+shake my head. Can't explain now.
+
+Where on earth did they come from? Coasting about very high up, I
+suppose, and suddenly swooped down at us.
+
+However, the drawing is done. So that's that. Home, John!
+
+One little bullet-hole through one of the wings, no more. Indifferent
+shooting, my friend Fritz. However, I can't talk, because I never fired
+at all!
+
+
+_February 16._
+
+I've never thanked you for the chocolates which arrived two days ago.
+But they arrived during one of the avalanches of work, and were all
+eaten within half an hour or so; not by me, but by various R.F.C. men
+who are always coming in and out of my office for "the latest."
+
+[Sidenote: TOLL OF WAR]
+
+To-day all frosty and sunny. Think of going on to the terrace at home
+before breakfast and seeing some jolly little new flower out, with the
+Golden Valley behind, all grey-blue and woody.
+
+It's all working well here, and, being the representative of the corps,
+I have a certain status which is pleasant. They think that I may or may
+not give them a good character to the Powers that be. Quite fun.
+
+They are awfully nice fellows. The only two I knew before were Eric and
+Bill Vivian. Bill I have known for a very long time, and during the war
+I've seen a great deal of him, and was very fond of him. He was brought
+down by Archie yesterday in our lines. Burnt to death. Dead when they
+reached him. Yesterday night at mess we were all quite gay. Only one man
+showed that his heart was as heavy as lead. And it seemed bad form.
+Heaviness of heart is bad form. No gentleman should have a heavy heart.
+A sign of weakness, of ill breeding.
+
+
+_February 17._
+
+To-day has been one of the jumpy, anxious days again, because something
+is to happen shortly, and those concerned are ringing up all the time
+asking me this and that about the Boche trenches, etc. And they want
+maps of this and plans of that and t'other. It's these times before some
+event that are so wearing. The smaller the event, the more wearing very
+often, because it's just some one or two officers, perhaps, who are
+doing the show, and, of course, half their success or failure depends on
+whether an unhappy intelligence officer can tell them exactly what they
+are up against, and exactly where it is and so on. I always go on the
+principle of assuming the worst. If I think there _may_ be a minny to
+meet them, I tell them there _is_ a minny, and probably two. It may not
+be very cheering to them. But if the minny is there, well, then I've put
+them on their guard; and if it isn't there, well, they can laugh at the
+work of the staff, and there's no harm done. People don't realize the
+awful strain and responsibility and hard work of staffs. It's sometimes
+a nightmare. Think of it in this way: I make a slip. A dozen men get
+killed. When the Push comes, I make another slip, and a hundred men get
+killed. Perhaps more. All the work of the lazy and incompetent staff!
+But if the staffs are lazy and incompetent, then, for goodness' sake,
+let's put more energetic and more competent people in their places. But
+where are these more competent people? In the divisions? in the
+battalions? But that is exactly where the present staffs came from! And
+they are the very people who originally jibed at the staffs! Well,
+anyhow, the war will end some day.
+
+
+_February 21._
+
+[Sidenote: THE WILD DUCK]
+
+_Re_ America. It doesn't look much as if they were coming in now, does
+it? However, one of the Scots Guards gave me June as the end of the war.
+He offered me 10 to 1 in francs; but, as I am always rather muddled as
+to whether that means that he gives me 10 francs if I win, or I give him
+1 franc if I lose, or what, I declined to bet. I expect he thinks I
+don't bet on principle. But, anyway, let's hope he wins.
+
+Leave is off at present.
+
+The worst of this game is that now I feel I want to do it all myself. I
+really do know a fair amount about the Boche lines, and I long to spend
+a day wandering about there taking notes!
+
+I was up yesterday afternoon trying to find out a certain T.M. battery,
+and what should fly by quite close and quite unconcerned but a duck! We
+were not very high, and it was very misty. The duck just appeared, with
+his neck stretched out, eager and oblivious. And then vanished into the
+mist again. I was thinking about that duck too much to find out what I
+wanted. Anyway, it was a fruitless journey. But flying amongst clouds is
+very beautiful. Sometimes we got above the clouds, to where the sun was
+functioning away as efficiently as ever. The clouds looked like millions
+of feather beds.
+
+
+_March 2._
+
+I have been doing some drawings of R.F.C. officers. They love being
+"took" out here, and my office is rapidly degenerating into a club,
+which makes work no easier.
+
+Well, you see from the papers what is happening. The Boche retires to
+the Hindenburg Line, and we follow.
+
+I should so love to tell you all about it, but Mum's the word. A great
+moral defeat for poor Fritz, anyway.
+
+The cavalry are sharpening their swords.
+
+The aeroplanes sail high up in the blue, like hungry hawks.
+
+
+_March 5._
+
+I am probably going off to-morrow. Now, where do you think? Paris?
+Madrid? Anything of that sort?
+
+Wrong again. Shall I tell you?
+
+VICTORIA.
+
+I'll send you a telegram directly I get across the briny.
+
+And I plead for no "back from the war tea-parties," please!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+[Illustration: PERONNE
+From BIACHES
+A few days after the evacuation. From a distance the place looked almost
+intact, as some of the outside walls had been left standing. That white
+building in the centre of the town was once the cathedral. MONT ST.
+QUENTIN on the left. The thin white lines on the slopes beyond are
+trenches.]
+
+
+_March 22._
+
+[Sidenote: THE HUN RETREAT]
+
+The Hun rearguards are now well beyond ----. I knew the place so
+intimately from photographs, and from high up in the air, that a view of
+it from terra-firma promised to be quite interesting.
+
+So with great eagerness, some sandwiches, and the faithful sketchbook, I
+sallied forth. Harry came, too. A glorious day of brilliant sun and
+brief snowstorms.
+
+From the aerodrome through all this devastated country, past wrecked
+villages, orchards laid waste, dug-out camps, bivouac camps, R.E. dumps,
+light railways, battered trollies lying on their sides, and all the ugly
+confusion of old wire rusted a red-hot colour, bits of corrugated iron,
+bits of netting screens, more wire, dead horses, dead men in all stages
+of decomposition, legs, hands, heads scattered anywhere, dead trees,
+mud, broken rifles, gas-bags, tin helmets, bully-beef tins, derelict
+trenches, derelict telephone wires, grenades, aerial torpedoes, all the
+toys of war, broken and useless. Tommy, the dear hairies, and the R.E.
+dumps, to remind you what vast stores of everything are still being
+accumulated.
+
+The ground becomes more and more like boiling porridge as you approach
+no-man's-land. Of no-man's-land itself, perhaps, the less said the
+better. No-beast's-land--call it that rather. And yet men have been very
+brave, very tender, in no-man's-land. Next we come to those Hun trenches
+that I have peered at from a distance so long and mapped so often. It
+all seems rather futile now.
+
+Past the support trenches. Past the second line. Damn it! how much
+larger and deeper that old emplacement is than I thought! The country is
+less pitted, too. Of course, it hasn't been fought over like our back
+areas. Why; here are trees scarcely knocked about at all. A recognizable
+field there. How real that stream looks! And, oh Jemima! a blue tit.
+
+A little distance farther. Over that gentle rise, and there behold ----.
+Surely one of the loveliest towns in France, on its low hill surrounded
+by the quiet waters of the Somme. From a distance it looks all right;
+though somehow, the smoke still ascending from it doesn't look natural.
+
+As you approach you realize that what looks so charming is just
+empty, shelled, charred, and broken. The Huns have destroyed every
+single house, all the bridges, and the cathedral, too. The cathedral
+that once crowned the town now stands a pale crushed ghost in the
+deserted market-place.
+
+[Sidenote: PERONNE]
+
+Some of the streets are almost amusing. Imagine Rye with the pretty
+alleys so encumbered and piled up with roofs, sofas, the contents of
+wardrobes, dormer-windows, smashed mirrors, rubble, and dust, that it's
+quite impossible to proceed. Very well, that's ----.
+
+Go into the houses, and there it's just as it is in the streets.
+Everything crushed to atoms. Images of saints have been hurled out on to
+garbage-heaps, and in the cathedral huge pillars are lying about in
+clumsy confusion amongst chairs, organ pipes, and gilded flowers.
+
+On a huge notice board in the Grande Place the Hun has written:
+
+     NICHT ARGERN: NUR WUNDERN!
+
+(Don't argue: only wonder! We the Huns did this. Why discuss what we
+have done? We have destroyed your city. Gape and stare, stupid fools!
+What does it matter to us? We took your precious town from you, because
+we wanted it. Now we don't want it any more. Here it is back again.
+With our love.) Some merry soldier wrote that up, I suppose. It was a
+pity.
+
+There were French officers in ---- to-day. I spoke to one. He answered
+with a quiet, simple bitterness and determination that would have turned
+even a Hohenzollern pale, I think. Unhappy Emperor! he must be feeling
+decidedly uneasy nowadays.
+
+Another odd sight was a tub full of water, with a little dog trying to
+get out. But the little dog was dead. A crump evidently landed somewhere
+near, and just petrified him, as it were. You often see men like that,
+struck dead in the middle of some act. Men are usually turned a dull
+purplish or greenish black. So was this little dog. We ate a delicious
+lunch on the battlements, our legs dangling 50 feet above the reedy
+water. Lots of moorhen and coot swimming about.
+
+The sun was warm. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. What a heavenly world
+it is!
+
+
+_April 6._
+
+After a hectic day comes this chance of writing to you. Eleven-thirty
+p.m.
+
+Would you like to hear about night flying? I didn't go, but I sketched
+the others going. And these are some notes. A bombing raid. It had been
+ordered in the morning. A raid on ----. After a cheery dinner we trooped
+out, singing foolish songs. The hangars a few hundred yards away across
+the mud. They looked huge and eerie, looming up from the dark ground,
+all stately in the moonlight. The moon had a halo, but was very bright,
+bright enough to sketch by.
+
+[Sidenote: NIGHT FLYING]
+
+Six flares were flickering at intervals round the aerodrome. A vivid
+orange colour against the dim blue sky. The horizon was greyer, and
+little flames flashed intermittently from it. There were the aeroplanes
+waiting.
+
+It was very cold. Soon the mechanics were starting the machines. The
+usual loud spurting and fizzing till presently the first machine begins
+to move. A big semi-luminous beetle lurching forward; then faster and
+faster and away, lifting up, up, up into the night. Only the lights
+visible now, but you can hear the hum of the engines a long way off.
+Other machines follow. The sky is full of twinkling fairies. They circle
+about for a bit, and then all head towards the east. Gradually the
+humming dies away in the distance. Look out for yourselves, you sleeping
+Huns!
+
+A long while afterwards the humming again.
+
+The first aeroplane is coming home. There he is. Gradually lower and
+nearer. The machine descends smoothly on to the ground, turns and
+"taxis," spitting angrily towards the hangar where it lives. Muffled
+figures get out, and the mechanics take in the machine tail first to its
+home. What? oh yes, quite successful. Smashed the place to blazes.
+Anyone got a cigarette? Other machines begin coming in. It's such a
+clear night that we still stand about in groups waiting for the last one
+to arrive. Damn it all! where can old Rupert have got to? We'll just
+wait till he comes back, and then bundle off to bed. Anxious? Good Lord,
+no! What about?
+
+Suddenly a small sharp flash high up in the night. Another and another.
+The Huns! They are coming. Archie is shelling them. Now another Archie
+poops off nearer here. Quick! Where's the orderly officer?
+
+In a couple of minutes all is dark. Gradually the drone of the Huns,
+high up in the air, becomes audible. No. They seem to be steering more
+towards ----. Searchlights from three different directions grope slowly
+to and fro. Where the devil are the Huns? The searchlights cannot find
+them. They must be cruising somewhere up above those thin cirrus clouds.
+Are they going to drop bombs on us? No, their direction is too far
+south. The searchlights cannot find them.
+
+[Sidenote: THE END]
+
+No sign of Rupert yet. Probably he has landed at another aerodrome. Dear
+old Rupert. One of the very best in this world. He'll be all right. Come
+on. It's too cold. Let's turn in.
+
+
+
+
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+THE TIDINGS BROUGHT TO MARY
+A MYSTERY: BY PAUL CLAUDEL
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+THE TALES OF ANTON TCHEHOV
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+Translated from the Russian by CONSTANCE GARNETT
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+Pocket Volumes, in the St. Martin's Library, pott 8vo., cloth, 2s. net
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+VOLUME ONE
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+Transcriber's Note: The following probable typos have been left as
+in the original: lepping, AMUNITION
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Letters to Helen, by Keith Henderson
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Letters to Helen, by Keith Henderson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Letters to Helen
+       Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front
+
+Author: Keith Henderson
+
+Illustrator: Keith Henderson
+
+Release Date: August 31, 2005 [EBook #16626]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS TO HELEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto), Suzanne Lybarger,
+Melissa Er-Raqabi and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS TO HELEN
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CRUCIFIX CORNER
+Between MONTAUBAN & HIGH WOOD
+One of the hands was shot away, and the figure hangs there suspended
+from the other.]
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS TO HELEN
+
+Impressions of an Artist
+on the Western Front
+
+By KEITH HENDERSON
+
+Illustrated
+
+LONDON
+CHATTO & WINDUS
+
+MCMXVII
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+These letters were never intended for publication.
+
+But when the pictures were brought back from France it was suggested
+that they should be reproduced, and a book evolved.
+
+Then a certain person (who shall be nameless) conceived the dastardly
+idea of exposing private correspondence to the public eye. He proved
+wilful in the matter, and this book came into the world.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+CRUCIFIX CORNER                         _Frontispiece_
+A CONFERENCE IN THE CHATEAU           _To face page_ 6
+BAILLEUL                                            10
+LE MONT DES CATS                                    18
+FRICOURT CEMETERY                                   32
+TRENCHES BETWEEN FRICOURT AND LA BOISELLE           48
+GIRD TRENCH                                         54
+A HOUSE IN GEUDECOURT                               60
+A WOUNDED TANK                                      66
+EXPLOSION OF AN AMMUNITION DUMP                     78
+THE BUTTE DE WARLENCOURT                            92
+PERONNE                                            106
+
+
+
+
+LETTERS TO HELEN
+
+
+_June 6, 1916._
+
+Well, here we are in the slowest train that ever limped, and I've been
+to sleep for seven hours. The first good sleep since leaving England.
+And now, as we've got twenty-eight hours to go still, there's time to
+write a letter. The last three days' postcards have been scrappy and
+unintelligible, but we departed without warning and with the most
+Sherlock Holmes secrecy. Not a word about which ports we were sailing
+from or to.
+
+However, I'll tell you what I can without disclosing any names of
+places.
+
+After moving off at midnight from among the Hampshire pine-trees, we
+eventually reached our port of departure. Great fun detraining the
+horses and getting them on board. The men were in the highest spirits.
+But how disgusting those cold rank smells of a dock are.
+
+We sailed the following evening. Hideously rough, and it took seventeen
+and a half hours. The men very quiet indeed and packed like sardines.
+It was wonderful to think of all those eager souls in all those ships
+making for France together over the black deep water. Some had gone
+before, and some came after. But the majority went over that night. I
+felt decidedly ill. And it was nervous work going round seeing after the
+horses and men when a "crisis" might have occurred at any moment!
+Luckily, however, dignity was preserved. Land at last "hove in sight" as
+the grey morning grew paler and clearer. What busy-looking quays! More
+clatter of disembarkation. No time to think or look about.
+
+Then, all being ready, we mounted and trekked off to a so-called "rest
+camp" near the town, most uneasy and hectic. But food late that evening
+restored our hilarity. A few hours' sleep and we moved off once more
+into the night, the horses' feet sounding loud and harsh on the unending
+French cobbles. By 8 a.m. we were all packed into this train. Now we are
+passing by lovely, almost English, wooded hills. Here a well-known town
+with its cathedral looks most enticing. I long to explore. Such singing
+from the men's carriages! Being farmers mostly, they are interested in
+the unhedged fields and the acres of cloches. They go into hysterics of
+laughter when the French people assail them with smiles, broken
+English-French, and long loaves of bread. They think the long loaves
+_very_ humorous! There are Y.M.C.A. canteens at most stations, so we are
+well fed. The horses are miserable, of course. They were unhappy on
+board ship. A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to. And
+now they are wretched in their trucks, Rinaldo and Swallow are, of
+course, terrified, while Jezebel, having rapidly thought out the
+situation, takes it all very quietly. She has just eaten an enormous
+lunch. Poor Rinaldo wouldn't touch his, and Swallow only ate a very
+little.
+
+[Sidenote: FRANCE AT LAST]
+
+In this carriage Jorrocks is snoring like thunder. Edward is eating
+chocolate. Sir John is trying to plough through one of "these Frenchy
+newspapers--damned nonsense, you know! they don't know what it all means
+themselves." And Julian is scrutinizing a map of our area.
+
+Everyone is so glad to be going up right into it now. That pottering
+about at home was most irritating. Just spit and polish, spit and polish
+all the time since August, 1914.
+
+We are all getting cramp, and have to stand up occasionally. Toby has
+smoked his fourteenth pipe.
+
+Oh, look! What a lovely rainbow! Treble. And under it a village with an
+estaminet, a dozen slate-roofed houses, and a very new chateau, hideous
+with scarlet bricks and chocolate draw-bridge and pepper-pot turrets.
+Poplars and more poplars. Still we rumble along through symmetrical
+France.
+
+
+_June 7._
+
+We are in one of the most lovely old French chateaux I have ever
+imagined. Half chateau, half farm, fifteen miles behind the line. We
+remain here for two or three days. Arrived late last night, tired and
+grubby. But, O ye gods, when dawn began to reveal this old courtyard
+with its hens and chickens and pigeons! On one side the old house with
+its faded shutters. On the other side the old gateway with a square
+tower and a pigeon-cote above. Along the other sides old barns. The
+country round we have hardly seen, but it looks exquisite. There are
+several most attractive foals in a field close by.
+
+And inside the chateau funny old-fashioned things--old beds with frowsty
+canopies, and old wall-papers with large designs in ferns and
+cornucopias. Imitation marble in the hall. Gilded tassels. Alas! my kit
+has not yet arrived. It's awful. And the anxiety to draw these things is
+feverish. We go so soon.
+
+When you look out of the rooms into the courtyard, you see our waggons
+and draft-horses, and the men eating bully-beef like wolves. Some of
+them (including Sergeant Cart) are shaving and washing stripped to the
+waist. The others just tear at the bread and beef and munch without
+speaking. Corporal Nutley and Corporal Field are pointing with their
+tea-mugs to the old gateway and the ducks and things. They all evidently
+love it. They sleep in the barns amongst the hay. The sun is warm and
+sleepy.
+
+
+_June 8._
+
+[Sidenote: THE CHATEAU-FARM]
+
+Still at this lovely chateau-farm, and Life seems to have gone into a
+trance. I wake up and look out into the courtyard and the sunlight, on
+geese, Muscovy ducks, pigs, and pigeons, and it all feels like a
+half-forgotten story. There are traces of the Huns, but all that seems
+unreal. You hear the boom! boom! boom! of the guns all day, and more so
+at night; but nothing can disturb the extraordinary remote peace of this
+chateau. The very stones in the courtyard look more friendly and more
+countrified than ordinary stones, as if some ancient fairy lived here.
+There's no doubt at all that the men feel it. Several of them have said
+how they like the place. They think it's a little bit like ----shire. I
+think I know what they mean.
+
+After the war perhaps we may visit the place together: I should love
+showing it to you. I'm not at all sure that it's really very beautiful.
+The architecture isn't good when you consider it. But somehow....
+
+
+_June 10._
+
+The same chateau. We are living a simple and brainless life. No
+field-days, of course, and for this relief much thanks. We don't know in
+the least what is happening. Troops come and troops go, and guns go by
+during the night, and Red Cross waggons go hither and thither, and the
+old turkey gobbles.
+
+Yesterday I was out with my troop, quite uninteresting. But what do you
+think? Something exploded not 100 yards away from Rinaldo. I was much
+farther off, dismounted. He didn't turn a hair, but only looked round
+and watched the smoke. Whereas, as you know, a little bit of paper blown
+across the road sends him into paroxysms of terror.
+
+
+[Illustration: A CONFERENCE IN THE CHATEAU DE FEBVIN-PALFART
+There are many of these old chateaux-farms in Northern France. The beds
+are under great frowsy canopies and all the curtains are looped up with
+heavy tassels.]
+
+
+_June 11._
+
+I went into an old church in a large town ten miles from here to-day
+with Sergeant Hodge. There were the usual tinsel things and red baize
+and sham flowers. Sergeant Hodge much impressed. He said after we
+emerged: "You know, sir, it's very fine indeed. It puts me in mind of
+a bazaar." This was in all good faith, and was intended as a great
+compliment to the church! We are having lots of rain, which is bad for
+the horses, who are picketed in the open. And thunder. It's often
+extremely difficult to tell whether, when the thunder is far away, it is
+thunder or guns. Quite a novel experience, and quite pleasant after the
+long period of make-believe in England. Discipline. So salutary and so
+irksome. Now for the battle. I own I long to get into the thick of it
+soon. We see infantry returning and going up, and we feel sick, somehow,
+to be still safe.
+
+This country is very charming, but a bit monotonous. Every road and
+every field exactly like every other.
+
+
+_June 13._
+
+[Sidenote: A SERVICE FOR KITCHENER]
+
+A service to-day for Kitchener. And we had to ride fifteen miles there
+in pouring rain. Then we stood in deep mud for about an hour, the rain
+gradually trickling down our necks.
+
+To-day delicious rumours of a German defeat at Verdun. Lots of
+prisoners, including the Crown Prince!
+
+Goodness me, such rain. Jezebel bit Swallow above the eye merely to show
+what her feelings were. He now has one eye enormously swollen and
+almost closed up. It is dressed with iodine, so he looks most
+remarkable. His beauty much damaged. But it will only be temporary.
+
+Hunt tells me that Swallow is so frightened of Jezebel he daren't lie
+down at night. But then, Hunt thinks Jezebel a sort of Bucephalus, and
+the more horses she kicks or bites the more pride he takes in her. He
+has no love for Swallow, unfortunately.
+
+There's a distant cannonade going on to-day. We all eye each other.
+
+
+_June 17._
+
+In the small-hours of to-night we leave this wonderful place. Why we
+were ever sent here or why moved away is one of those mysteries only
+known to a few staff officials.
+
+But how we have loved it. At least I have. Some of the others--Jorrocks
+for instance--have been bored. But, then, they couldn't draw, poor
+dears. Do you know I have done three pictures. That's a lot in this
+military life. One of the courtyard, with cocks and hens and things, and
+in the distance men cleaning their saddles. Another of the vestibule,
+with Julian and Edward consulting over some map or other at a table.
+Another of a "fosse" or coal-pit about a mile away. A coal-pit sounds
+repulsive, but not so in Northern France. They are away from all houses
+and surrounded by corn-fields. The coal refuse is the curious part of
+it. Up it comes from the main shaft and is piled up into a series of
+large pyramids, visible for miles around. Many of the famous "redoubts"
+are coal-refuse pyramids really. And such nice little chimneys.
+Rinaldo--gone! Isn't it heartbreaking! An important person comes nosing
+round, and asks for him. Sir John doesn't like to refuse. I am
+powerless. Adieu, dear Rinaldo! One gets awfully fond of a horse.
+Rinaldo was very naughty sometimes, but I loved him all the more for it.
+And now his good looks have been disastrous. Oh that he had been uglier.
+Isn't it maddening. Such a leaper, so fast, and such courage. Well,
+perhaps I shall see him again.
+
+
+_June 19._
+
+[Sidenote: FEBVIN TO BAILLEUL]
+
+At the last moment an order that we are not to go. Then late last night
+an order to send on an advanced party of one officer and one sergeant
+and two men immediately. So off I go with Sergeant Dobbin and Hunt and
+Noad. We had to find billets and bivouacs for the squadron at a place
+far from here. This we did, and the squadron has just arrived, and we
+have had lunch and are feeling very fat indeed. We have just seen a
+pretty aeroplane show. Six of them flew over our heads towards the
+Boche, and presently puff, puff! went the little dark clouds of smoke
+all amongst them. They then got too high and too far off for us to see,
+but we still saw the Archie shells following them. First a flash in the
+sky, then a very dark spot; then the spot grows larger and fluffier, and
+becomes a dusky little cloud. So you see some flashes, some dark spots,
+and some larger fluffy clouds--all on the wretched aeroplane's track.
+
+Only two returned, alas! but they told us they had brought down three
+Aviatiks.
+
+We're moving with great rapidity up into colder climes. More anon.
+
+
+_June 22._
+
+I wrote a p.c. early this morning, as I thought I might get no other
+chance. Things are all merry and bright. We have moved up like oiled
+lightning from ---- to a rather famous place. Hedges and hop-fields.
+Very interesting church--not hurt at all. We are suffering so (at least,
+the poor men are) from thirst. There's no water anywhere. I long to gulp
+down green pond water. However, that will be remedied shortly, I hope. I
+went into the big town and bought a barrel of beer for the men. Tempting
+Providence. But there's nothing else. The water isn't good even when
+boiled. However, all will be well soon.
+
+
+[Illustration: BAILLEUL
+A peaceful place behind the battle.]
+
+
+_June 23._
+
+[Sidenote: MANY SMELLS AND NO WATER]
+
+The most extraordinary things are happening. All very quiet and humdrum
+on the surface. Only the aeroplanes are busy, and if the sun is between
+you and them there are always the little black high Archie clouds
+following them, like vultures appearing from nowhere.
+
+Our quick bolt up here has had several pleasant results. First, the
+country is very beautiful, more hilly in this immediate neighbourhood,
+with great plains stretching away on all sides. The low hills all have
+woods round them, and a windmill or a church on the top. Second, B
+Squadron have already arrived, and our old Brigade-Major and lots of
+other old friends. It was most joyous meeting them all again. We came
+trotting down one road, covered with dust, and they came trotting down
+another road even more covered with dust, having trekked all day.
+
+Isn't it funny. One gets so quickly used to things that already we have
+ceased to notice the smells, which at first made us wield bottles of
+disinfectant wherever we went. But now, when the farms and outhouses and
+other places where we live smell, we merely laugh, and "fatigues" are
+all at work automatically before nightfall, and by next morning--well,
+the smells have not gone, but the general feeling is that a good start
+has been made.
+
+The water problem is still unsolved, and we get very thirsty; but thirst
+is a small fleabite, after all. "Which would you rather have," I asked a
+discontented lance-corporal, "a bit of a thirst or a dentist drilling a
+hole down a pet nerve?" And he owned he'd rather have a thirst. You
+know, it's most awkward. They come to you when there's any difficulty
+and seem to think you can put things right always. For instance, a man
+came up the other day: "Please, sir, I've lost my haversack." "When did
+you miss it first?" "Between ---- and ----, sir." "Now what do you want
+me to do?" "I don't know, sir." "Do you want me to go back to ---- and
+search the whole of the twenty odd miles to ---- on the off chance of
+finding it?" "No, sir." "Do you want to do so yourself?" "No, sir." "And
+even if I ordered you to go, do you think that, with so many troops
+about, you would be likely to find it still there?" "No, sir."
+
+The result is, of course, that I have to buy one for the unfortunate lad
+in the nearest town. One must eat. And our haversacks are our larders.
+Haversacks are supplied by the army, but it takes such a time to get
+anything, that, if the matter is urgent, it has to be done without the
+army. We (the bloomin' orficers) have a "mess-cart" for all our absurd
+wines and tinned peaches and things, but the men often have nothing but
+the contents of their haversacks.
+
+
+_June 25._
+
+[Sidenote: READY FOR THE PUSH]
+
+We are in a funny state of waiting for something to happen. Rumours
+flying about all the time. We live on them--a bite off one, a slice off
+another, a merry-thought off another. And so we learn the news of the
+world. Papers when we get a chance of going into some town, and then
+only two days old, or else French, which are very scrappy. Often we get
+no news at all for three or four days, except what some passing
+ambulance will vouchsafe. And usually they don't really know much. So
+when there's an extra heavy strafing or an extra quiet lull we learn
+that the entire German staff has been captured, or Rheims evacuated, or
+Holland sunk, or something else equally strange. The M.G.'s were
+hammering away furiously last night, and the whole line was lovely with
+star shells hanging like arc lights in the air, and then dropping slowly
+to earth. They light up everything like immense moons.
+
+
+_June 28._
+
+Starting from the farm where the horses are hidden at nine o'clock last
+night (twenty-one, as we call it out here), after a hot meal, we
+marched through Bedfordshire-like country, along ascending paths, to the
+bottom of a wooded hill where a motor lorry with picks and shovels met
+us. Thence along a narrow muddy path through a wood. The path circles
+round the hill. The east side of the hill faces the Boche front line. It
+was still quite light. The undergrowth thick and dank. Our fellows very
+merry. The Boches know this path, which is pitted with shell holes. They
+shell the place by day, oddly enough, but hardly ever by night.
+
+It was raining gently. Turtle-doves continually crossed our way. I felt
+much intrigued. A very weird wood. The guns crashed lethargically,
+intermittently.
+
+When we got round to the east side of the hill, the R.E.'s, who were
+acting as guides, comforters, and friends, showed us what we were to do:
+to dig a line of trench 6 feet deep, and as narrow as might be, for some
+cables that were to lead into a very important set of dug-outs for
+certain pink and gold people.
+
+The dug-outs are deep in the side of the hill. It's what is called an
+advanced H.Q.--_i.e._, when the Push begins, the gilded ones will crawl
+in and rap out messages to the various commanders, and watch the battle.
+
+The R.E. officers showed us what was wanted, and each man put in his
+pick or shovel to mark the line. This is the procedure: each pick or
+shovel about 2 yards apart, and each man delves on that spot till he is
+6 feet down. If it were not done like this, then (when it became too
+dark to see) the line would be lost. This only applies fully, of course,
+when you are in woods or other cover. Digging isn't really a cavalry
+job. But what of that?
+
+[Sidenote: TRENCH DIGGING]
+
+Well, now we've started. It's about ten o'clock, and getting very dim.
+Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle. Humphry and I creep up (neglectful of duty)
+to the top of the hill. A tiny tower there, smashed to pieces, but
+beautiful in the twilight. We creep about amongst shell craters.
+Presently a strange sweet odour. Flowers? Impossible. We stare into the
+dusk. An exquisite faint scent all around us. Surely, surely, thyme?
+Yes, sweet-williams, thyme. Evidently there has been a cottage here, but
+now only a mass of rubble and beams and glass to show where once it was.
+Sweet-williams, thyme, and later some Canterbury bells. Another
+dream-place, like that old chateau-farm.
+
+What a view from here of the German lines and ours! As it gets darker,
+the flashes of the guns and the Very lights' solemn brilliance
+illuminate the whole show like a map. That tragic ruin of a town on our
+left is being shelled as usual. Jim is there. In front of us the German
+salient. All comparatively quiet. How lovely it is! The sounds of our
+men digging in the wet soil mingle now with other small noises. Voices
+underground. Listen. And a mouth-organ's cheery bray coming from the
+bowels of the earth. It is pitch-dark. We stand up like Generals
+surveying the battle-field. No danger. The Boche does not waste
+ammunition.
+
+The rain is very heavy. I have got a tuft of sweet-william to smell.
+
+We return to the men. They are wet through, but quite happy and content.
+Not a bullet, not a scrap of anything that goes pop. They work in a
+warm, wet peace. That is one of the odd things you learn--that only
+certain places are dangerous, and usually only at certain times.
+
+The rain is coming down with tropical intensity. I am in a misty dream.
+It's all so mysterious. Suddenly I fall over something--plonk into the
+middle of some excavated earth, which the rain has made into semolina
+pudding. Tiresome to be absent-minded. How it pours! Midnight.
+
+The roots of the trees make it very difficult to dig tidily, but the men
+use their "billucks" with the unerring skill of farmers, and their
+spades and picks as you or I would use a pencil. Time goes on. The
+trench must be done before 2.30 a.m. We have to be gone before dawn. It
+is nearly done now. Half-past twelve. The rain is stopping. One o'clock.
+No, it isn't. It's coming down again. Half-past one. The trench is
+finished. We must cover up all signs of it with branches, lest the wily
+Taube should see, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.
+
+A quarter to two.
+
+[Sidenote: A STRAFE]
+
+Suddenly crash! bang! clash! boom! bang! We almost jump out of our
+skins. Where the deuce were all those guns hidden? From all about us,
+and far away behind and on either flank, our guns have begun strafing.
+The most hideous and deafening din.
+
+The ground seems to shake. Then an order comes that we are to clear out
+at once. We do so. The Boches haven't answered yet, but they will. The
+whole thing seems quite unreal. The men vastly entertained. I honestly
+felt as if I were at some exciting melodrama. The least cessation of the
+guns, and I found myself saying: "Don't stop! don't stop!" I shouted
+into Corporal Nutley's car: "Can you hear what I'm saying?" and he
+answered: "No, sir."
+
+At last we got out into the little path, and had to double along through
+the mud. Humphry was last man out, and he saw the one and only shell
+the Boches sent over, exploding quite close to the aforementioned
+dug-out.
+
+Isn't it funny. The Boches don't apparently know of this dug-out, or of
+the cable trenches, or they would, of course, smash it to pieces. And,
+for some reason that I haven't yet grasped, they never reply to our guns
+immediately. They wait for perhaps ten minutes, and _then_ they don't
+always reply to the same spot we spoke from. As, for example, this wood.
+Our guns were all in and round about the wood. The Boches apparently
+strafed back at an unoffending village on the west side of the hill.
+
+So, with our guns still behaving like things delirious, we eventually
+reached the horses. Jezebel was quietly gorging herself with long
+luscious grass beside the hedge. She told me she hadn't noticed anything
+unusual. Poor Swallow was standing quite still, with his nostrils wide
+open, breathing hard and trembling all over. A good many horses were
+trembling, but the majority agreed with Jezebel: "It's only some silly
+nonsense on the part of those Human Beings again. Don't listen."
+
+Then we saddled up and rode back to a place well behind, where we could
+exercise the beasties. They had been given no exercise for three days.
+And so home again to this farm. The horses are all in a field surrounded
+by trees, and couldn't be seen from above at all. I have seen lots
+of other horse-lines of other units, though, much closer to the front
+than this is--quite open to view. The fact is, I think, that Hun
+aircraft very seldom indeed gets across into our preserves.
+
+
+[Illustration: LE MONT DES CATS
+Near YPRES
+In the early days of the war spies used to signal from the monastery on
+the top of this hill. The country round about is quite flat and
+water-logged.]
+
+
+_July 6._
+
+[Sidenote: THE ROADS NEAR DRANONTRE]
+
+Overnight it appears in orders that the roads from ---- to ---- via ----
+are to be reported on with reference to their suitability for heavy
+transport, guns, cavalry, infantry, etc.
+
+So after an early breakfast Hunt comes round, with Swallow for me and
+Jezebel for himself, haversack rations for us both, and feeds for the
+horses. I feel very much on the qui-vive, as I haven't seen that
+particular part before.
+
+A grey warm day. Some miles to go due south before we get near our
+destination. As we approach it we find, as usual, roads and railways
+being made, and fatigue-parties repainting tents with blotches and
+stripes. Then come notices, "No traffic along this road," or, "This road
+liable to be shelled," with signboards at every corner, "To ----" or
+some other place in the trenches. Sometimes the notices say
+"Something-or-other Avenue" or "Burlington Arcade," etc.--nicknames, but
+recognized officially. And all the time we are passing endless lorries
+and Red Cross waggons and troops and dug-out camps. As we get closer the
+signs of shelling get worse, and children are seen no longer. Old men,
+though, occasionally observed working in a field quite unperturbed.
+Rarely a French soldier or an interpreter with his sphinx badges. All
+this quite lost on Hunt, who has "quite got used to abroad, thank you,
+sir." He is eating chocolate or something, half a horse-length (the
+correct distance) behind me.
+
+Now on our left is a famous ridge, with a ruined village on the top.
+Not, you understand, a ridge in the Swiss sense, but rather in the
+Norfolk sense. I should like to go and see it, but it's too open to the
+Boche's eye, and I don't want to dismount yet. So we curve round
+right-handed a bit. Aha! "To ----." Nous voila! Follow down this muddy
+track under cover of the ridge, and we arrive at ----. A wood just
+beyond the little town. Oh, mournful wood! "Bois epais, redouble ton
+ombre." But they say the anemones and the primroses were as merry and
+sweet as ever this spring. Bravo little wood!
+
+The village is, of course, evacuated by all inhabitants. The houses all
+in ruins. By now all the remaining windows have been boarded up and the
+blown-out doors barred against prying eyes. Here we are at an old
+estaminet called "Aux Coeurs joyeux." There's hardly anything but the
+sign left. At the cross-roads in the centre of the town is the church,
+so dismal. No roof, pillars broken and lying about the floor amongst
+debris of broken images, chairs, and muddy rubble.
+
+[Sidenote: PLOEGSTEERT]
+
+As I am coming out I turn over the hand of an image, and underneath it
+what the deuce is this? Why, a fragment of an old picture, torn and
+decaying away. What shall I do? Leave it to rot? Give it to ... Yes,
+exactly ... to whom? And would anyone thank me for it? Just a head of
+St. John, very battered and faded. It's a fragment about a foot square,
+and through all the mud one can see something like this: A head of St.
+John in the corner; rays of light (two very thin small rays) shining on
+him, and a look of great suffering on his face. The background a sort of
+dull ochre. Evidently once a large composition. There are two books, one
+with EVAN, and the other with, I think, BIBLIA SACRA,
+written on it. It is quite worthless except from a sentimental point of
+view.
+
+The exposure and the heat of the explosions have sadly cracked and
+peeled the paint, but it seems vaguely symbolical. Near here I picked up
+some minute bits of green glass.
+
+However, there was a notice: "It is dangerous to loiter here." So I tore
+myself away, and we remounted. The Boche can't see into the town
+because of the remaining buildings, but the whole place is utterly
+empty--not a dog even.
+
+Soon the road to the next village _is_ exposed to the Boche's view.
+Therefore canvas screens about 20 feet high have been erected, so that,
+if necessary, troops, and even lorries, can hurry by. It is most
+curious. "But for that thin bit of canvas, my good Swallow, you would
+get something into your tummy you wouldn't like," I remarked. At that
+moment the sun came out. We were keeping to the side of the road where
+it is soft going. Suddenly Swallow leaped like a stag into the middle of
+the road all over the _pave_. Panic terror. He had seen the shadow of a
+starling flit across his path!
+
+Jezebel was tittuping along behind, thinking only of her next feed. I
+cannot get her to take any interest in these thrilling spots. Sometimes
+a soldier or two would emerge from a cellar, the entrance to which would
+be piled up with sand-bags. And once or twice bang! bang! goes a gun
+quite close by.
+
+Well, so we go through the next deserted and wrecked village, again out
+of sight of the Boche, because of the ruins and a few trees. Then into a
+very famous town indeed, and across a river three times by three
+different bridges--not the old bridges, which are broken down, but
+sapper-built bridges. Here is a party going into the trenches just on
+the far side of the town. They look distinctly cheery, and are all of
+the same ripe brown. Thence right-handed again and gradually back to
+civilization, or, rather, to life first and civilization some way
+behind. Eventually people strolling about and shops. I bought a pair of
+those jolly French-tartan stockings for little Bun. With a grey dress
+they will look most charming, I think.
+
+[Sidenote: ARMENTIERES]
+
+Again masses of soldiers with their field-kitchens in muddy fields from
+which all traces of grass have been stamped long ago. And the
+everlasting mule. There are mules everywhere out here.
+
+Such attractive cottages, white with green shutters, and sometimes
+little Dutch gardens. Many windmills, several pigeons always fluttering
+round each. A lorry in a ditch. A roadside canteen, with perhaps an
+A.S.C. camp near by. Fields and fields of corn and every other crop
+under the sun. I long to sketch, but feel slightly nervous of so doing
+so far from camp. I don't want to be arrested as a spy. We are
+practically out of the danger area by now, but you never know. Some
+boring A.P.M. might pounce on the sketch and create a botheration.
+
+Meantime I have been laboriously making pretty maps to present to Sir
+John, coloured maps showing where such and such a rise of ground could
+be held, or where such and such a road offers difficulties to transport,
+etc. But it's not easy to do, and we don't get back to camp till five
+minutes before stables, having covered about thirty miles. Besides, we
+had to stop and feed ourselves and the horses.
+
+Then stables. Sergeant Hodge reprimanded for not having reported a bad
+kick. Southcombe slacking a bit. Must keep an eagle eye on that young
+man. At the end a whistle (no trumpets allowed). The horses all neigh
+and toss their heads and paw. Nosebags are put on, and after touring
+round to see that all is correct we slope off to tea, which Hale and Co.
+have got all ready. Luxurious menage as of yore. But good when you're
+hungry, there's no doubt. We are moving again--probably to-morrow.
+
+
+_July 10._
+
+We have moved. The sixth time altogether. Not far though. A close view
+of the sweet-william hill. It must be sketched.
+
+I am sitting on some sacks of corn, wondering why Fritz doesn't lob over
+a crump or two, just to wake us up. Jezebel is gorging herself close by.
+Swallow eats a bit, and then suddenly looks up and sniffs nervously. I
+suppose he has heard a beetle trotting by, or seen a twig fall off a
+tree.
+
+The horses are all picketed out in a field, and we are in bivvies. Hale
+has made me a bed out of some poles and wire netting, as he says it is a
+clay subsoil and I mustn't lie on the grass. I suppose he knows.
+
+
+_July 12._
+
+[Sidenote: THE HORSES]
+
+I'm writing this in a queer dilapidated mud cottage, inhabited by an
+ancient ex-soldier aged eighty-three. He is very difficult to
+understand. His language is quite foreign to me. But he owns the
+quaintest little doll-like image of the Virgin in a glass case, and
+several Bristol balls! I nearly fell flat when I saw them. His
+grandfather, I think he says, was in England once. The cottage is quite
+close to our present camp, and we go in for meals when it's very wet.
+
+The bed Hale made me is growing into a house. He has discovered various
+old sacks, bits of tarred felt, and planks, and the place is becoming a
+most attractive little abode.
+
+Then you must imagine an old wild-cherry tree, and lots of young oaks
+and elders, etc., all round. Jezebel and Swallow live close by. Jezebel
+has acquired a new trick. You know she doesn't like having her tummy
+groomed. Well, now (especially, of course, when it's very muddy) she
+waits till Hunt has finished dressing her, and then, as soon as his back
+is turned, she lies down and rolls. Hunt is in despair. He used to be
+really fond of her. But now I believe he'd kill her if he could,
+sometimes. All his labour entirely and ridiculously in vain. I'm
+convinced that she does it on purpose, because she always chooses just
+the moment when he has achieved a beautiful polish on her, and either
+has to go off to breakfast or else to get the saddle or something. It's
+as good as a play.
+
+We are learning the "tactical" merits of all the roads and woods and
+hills (such as they are) all along our sector of front, and as much as
+we can, with field-glasses, of the other side. An offensive. What fun.
+But exactly where are we going to offend? Rumours everywhere. If, we
+say, that village or that ridge has to be taken from this or that
+unexpected position, how shall we do it? Suppose we get Fritz on the
+hop, as they have near Peronne. Where are the most covered approaches to
+the slopes of that hill? Shall we carry the thing off as splendidly as
+those squadrons did before Peronne, or shall we bungle the show? You'll
+see.
+
+We get so few papers here, and only two days old at that, but no one
+seems much the worse for it.
+
+[Sidenote: NEUVE EGLISE]
+
+Only one solitary man with lice so far. The man has been sent away, and
+is, I hear, to be given sulphur baths and scrubbed with a scrubbing
+brush.
+
+Oh, I was going to say just now--_re_ reconnoitring--that we were doing
+all the ground about a village where there is a church even more smashed
+than the St. John place. It is on a hill, and all the village is Sahara.
+The church remains with the remnants of four outside walls and the
+tower. Fritz does not destroy the tower, as it is a good spot for him to
+range on to. And outside the tower, right up at the top, is the bronze
+minute-hand of the old clock. The rest of the clock-face has been blown
+into the middle of the church, and lies there nearly complete amidst a
+crumbled heap of pillars and mortar and chair-legs and pulpit fragments.
+One notice on a house amused me so, and the troop too. It says, "Do not
+_touch_ this house." The reason being rather obvious. For if you did
+touch the house, it would certainly fall on to your head. The next shell
+will bring it down, even if it's a couple of hundred yards away, merely
+by the vibration. We find shell holes so useful for watering the horses.
+They seem to retain water in a most curious way.
+
+
+_July 19._
+
+On the move again. A four days' trek. Not more than twenty miles a day,
+in order to keep the horses "in the pink." They are certainly very fit
+now, and a gentle twenty miles a day just keeps them nicely exercised.
+But twenty miles _at a walk_ is not overexciting. Still, it is
+interesting to be covering the ground. We already know quite a lot of
+the back of the front. Last night we arrived in a cool lull after
+showers. From quiet and uneventful stretches of hedgeless corn-fields,
+intersected by long straight roads, lined sometimes with poplars, but
+more often with lopped wych-elms or willows, we descended rather
+suddenly into a little wooded valley where a village sits by the trouty
+stream. After watering the horses at the stream, we filed by squadrons
+into various fields and picketed down for the night. Some of us in a
+small but clean estaminet, others in barns.
+
+A very peaceful trek, quite different from the dazzling swoop that was
+threatened.
+
+
+_July 20._
+
+Am I telling you about the things you want to hear? Usually I think I've
+talked mostly about our surroundings, doings, and only to a very small
+extent about our thoughts. But, truth to relate, we think so little
+that there is not much in that line to record. On this job you just
+can't think. And a good thing too, perhaps.
+
+[Sidenote: FLESSELLES]
+
+However, here we are, and here I expect we shall remain for, say, a
+week. The horses are all right out in the open. The men are in barns.
+But we are in cottages--real, almost English-looking cottages. Edward
+and I share a room in one, and the others are dotted about the village.
+Now, this is the cottage:
+
+From the high street (the only street) you turn into a little gate, and
+then walk down a path of brick with a narrow flower border on either
+side, and vegetables beyond. The cottage is white, with lace curtains
+and brick floors, without carpets, like all French cottages. The walls
+have endless pictures of saints and things, with occasional crucifixes
+and school certificates and faded photographs of people in stiff dresses
+and crimped hair.
+
+Out at the back more kitchen-garden with some fruit-trees.
+
+Altogether quite a charming little place. Dusty and rather flat open
+country intersected by deepish valleys, not unlike the Cirencester road
+if you removed all the woods, or nearly all. We don't, of course, know
+what we are going to do now.
+
+
+_July 23._
+
+Things is curiouser and curiouser. In all haste we got ready to move. We
+then moved like tortoises. I rode over to ---- yesterday. Cavalry all
+over the place like locusts. And, lawks! what a din! Guns in a violent
+paroxysm of rage. Aeroplanes wandering about in the sky, purring like
+angry panthers, all yellow in the sunlight. And all day and night more
+dusty men and dusty horses and dusty lorries and dusty guns coming and
+going, coming and going.
+
+The other squadron at last quite close to us. Long talks with Dennis.
+He's had an exciting time, and was under orders for a most hair-raising
+job, which didn't come off owing to Fritz's tiresome habit of doing the
+unexpected. Horrors! The General has been trying Swallow. I fear he may
+steal him. Of course he has every right to any horse in the regiment,
+but it is quite difficult to smile. Swallow is, unfortunately, even more
+showy than Rinaldo was; but he shied at a goat, bless him, and I think
+that may just turn the scale. I shall now proceed to train Swallow to
+shy at every blade of grass, every grain of sand. Long live that goat!
+We are still "standing by." It is a wearing existence. I bathed
+yesterday in a well-known river. So beautiful and willowy.
+
+
+_July 28._
+
+[Sidenote: A BATH]
+
+Temperature 100,000 deg.! And I am lying on a bed in a wee cottage, very,
+very dusty and dirty. Hale, however, is going to bring some water from
+the pump, and, oh Jerusalem, won't it be heavenly--a bath! All these
+things off, and lovely clean things on, and lovely coffee to drink when
+that's done. I wouldn't change the prospects of the next half-hour for
+all the pearls and peacocks of Araby--no, not if you offered me the
+Peace of Europe! Europe be blowed! I want my bath.
+
+You see, it's like this: The corps H.Q. moved to a different area some
+days ago, preceded by us. Everything in the area left in an utterly
+unorganized, uncatalogued condition. We have to tear round and find out
+where the various divisions can go.
+
+And we have _got_ to find room for more divisions than have ever
+occupied this area before. Useless to come back and report that such and
+such villages have no water for men or horses. The water has got to be
+found. Dig for it. Organize fatigue-parties and dig. Dam up little
+trickles by the roadside until quite large ponds are formed. Get the
+engineers and pioneers on to it. Labour battalions--anything. So I've
+been riding madly about, and I'm like a treacle pudding in a
+sand-storm.
+
+The bath! Hale, you are a most excellent fellow. That'll do splendidly.
+Have you got my towel?... INTERVAL.... And now, dear friends,
+it is another man that you see before you. A man who has had a bath. A
+man less like a bit of oily motor-waste, and more like Sir George
+Alexander. This delicious coffee, too! A bowl of it, made by Mme.
+Whatever-her-name-is. I take it up in both hands and quaff it. Here's to
+You and to Home, and to Everybody--and (just to show there's no ill
+feeling) here's to the poor old Boche!
+
+
+_July 29._
+
+In the same cottage.
+
+It's very hot. Ammunition lorries go by in an endless string, making the
+deuce of a dust. But we are far away from guns and gun food and noise. I
+got leave to go up to ---- yesterday.
+
+I do dislike noise so, don't you? The noise of a battery in action is
+diabolical, and the very thought of it makes me shiver. There go the
+senseless lorries, all packed with music for a more hellish orchestra
+than you can remotely imagine. The first few bars are enough to drive
+you nearly frantic. It's unholy. It seems to split your head and
+tear your ears out of their sockets. Can you understand a noise that
+hits you? Hits unbearably, and then again. Crashes on to you. Bangs your
+bones out of your skin, till you feel dazed and sick.
+
+Still the lorries go by.
+
+
+[Illustration: FRICOURT CEMETERY
+The moon and some signal lights over FRICOURT. LA
+BOISELLE just over the hill. French crosses all bent and twisted.
+The little chapel still standing.]
+
+
+_August 3._
+
+[Sidenote: GUNS AT FRICOURT]
+
+I hear the General doesn't like Swallow, so there's a good chance of his
+returning. When you get angry with Swallow, he loses control of his legs
+altogether, and they all fly about in every direction. He is quite like
+Rinaldo in character,--not so perpetually fidgety, but as nervous, and
+more easily frightened. Jezebel is showing her worth now like a Trojan.
+She knows she has to make up for the loss of Swallow (whom I think she
+rather misses). She is behaving splendidly. She is blatantly well, and
+obeys all orders like clockwork; never tired; always hungry--a model.
+The other mare, Moonlight, a dark brown, seems to be somehow exhausted.
+I think she has had a very hard time of it, and has been wounded in the
+foot. Her foot is all right now, but she seems to have no life left in
+her. The war has utterly beaten her. Hunt is grazing and grooming and
+petting her all day. So she may pick up. At present she is somehow
+rather pathetic. She was with the Indian cavalry before she got
+wounded. And then she went to a veterinary hospital. She is well made,
+and may possibly brighten up. Hunt declares that she has "lost all her
+courage." I'm glad I'm not a horse.
+
+
+_August 5._
+
+This is such an amazing country and in such an amazing condition. I
+could collect a Harrod's Stores in a day--interesting and useful things,
+too. But it's impossible to carry things about. One daren't overload the
+horses, and one daren't overload the transport. Both are so heavy laden,
+as it is.
+
+The signal job is quite interesting, really, and the Colonel gives me an
+absolutely free hand.
+
+Jezebel and Co. are driven distracted by the horse-flies. I took Jezebel
+into a stream to-day, but she started to sit down! So the flies must
+just bite, I fear. Large grey brutes.
+
+Hunt made me laugh so last night. I was looking round the horses with
+Edward. They were waiting to be fed with their evening hay. To my
+surprise and pleasure, Moonlight suddenly neighed. "Evidently getting
+her appetite back," I remarked. "Oh yes, sir," says Hunt; "several
+times I've caught her _hollerin'_ for her meals lately!" Isn't that a
+lovely expression?
+
+[Sidenote: JEZEBEL IN ONE OF HER MOODS]
+
+Hunt is such a good chap. He thinks nothing of "abroad," but a lot of
+the "'osses," as he calls them. I found him what seemed to me a very
+nice loft to sleep in when we got here. But no: "I'd rather sleep with
+my 'osses, sir, thank you." And he sleeps practically under their noses.
+"You see, sir, the mare might get one of her moods on."
+
+He is getting very fond of Jezebel now, and whenever she errs, he
+attributes the error to one of her moods.
+
+She tore her nosebag to pieces the other day; whether because she was
+hungry and it was empty, or because it amused her, or because she was
+being bitten by a fly, I don't know. No one seems to have seen her do
+it. "One of her moods," says Hunt; and that's all there is to be said
+about the incident.
+
+My dear, this country is most enchanting. Far away from nasty noises,
+full of unexpected wooded valleys and willowy streams.
+
+All the little shrines are, as usual, surrounded by half-clipped trees.
+
+And the wild-flowers. Clear pale blue succory is the most charming of
+all, and I am going to send you some plants as soon as they have ceased
+flowering.
+
+
+_August 6._
+
+You can't think how difficult it is to take any interest in military
+matters sometimes. The inclination to let things slide. The feeling that
+an order is not so terrifying as it once was; that after all, who will
+know or bother if one furtive subaltern creeps out one evening to
+sketch?
+
+
+_August 8._
+
+Do you know, it's unintelligent, but I do so enjoy being here away from
+the fevers of war. War is getting tedious, and the summer is all too
+short.
+
+Swallow is coming back. Isn't it splendid! The General finds him too
+irritating and tiresome. Jezebel will be glad, for she doesn't like the
+ghost-horse Moonlight, and she never really disliked Swallow. I can't
+say she liked him, because she likes no one, dear lamb. But she used to
+look on Swallow with rather less suspicion, somehow. And Swallow has a
+habit of licking that she approves of. I have often seen her snap at him
+even while he is licking her; but he always continues after a moment. I
+think it soothes her when the flies are tiresome.
+
+This place has a beautiful church, which I have drawn. It's quite an
+unusually charming bit of the country.
+
+
+_August 11._
+
+[Sidenote: DOMART]
+
+Jezebel did such an astonishing thing yesterday. I was out with the
+signallers practising. We didn't want the bother of holding or picketing
+the horses. So I ordered "off-saddle," and then put a guard over the
+disused quarry where I had decided to leave them. The quarry had a
+grassy floor, and walls of chalk that in one place were only about 7
+foot high. Jezebel has been so good (for her) lately, that I determined
+to leave her with the other horses. They were stripped of all bridles
+and saddles and things, and had heaps of room to wander.
+
+Meanwhile we were carrying on with our work.
+
+Presently shouts from the guard. I went back to see what was the matter.
+My dear, Jezebel had tried to jump out of the quarry!
+
+She had tried twice, but the sides were too steep and high, and she had
+slipped back. When I arrived, she was quietly grazing as if nothing had
+happened. Ah, but wait. This is not all.
+
+Later on in the morning another hooroosh. A loud squealing and sounds of
+kicking. One of her moods again, I thought to myself grimly. That
+well-known voice. I should recognize her squeal anywhere. As I was going
+towards the quarry with Corporal Dutton to get her tied up or else
+hobbled, lo and behold! the two guards had vanished. "What the
+devil...." And all of a sudden out pour the horses careering downhill
+like mad! It was so appalling that Corporal Dutton and I just stood and
+shouted with laughter.
+
+My dear, if there is anything in the whole world that goads a Major, a
+Brigadier, or any other military man, to fury and madness, it is a loose
+horse.
+
+Imagine, then, forty-four horses all riderless, without saddles or
+bridles (and therefore almost impossible to catch), stampeding straight
+into a corps H.Q. village. This village is crawling with Generals!
+
+Well, in the end we caught them all, and by some dazzling piece of luck,
+for which Allah be praised, no General, no Colonel, nor anyone else,
+seems to have got wind of the incident. Subalterns, yes, and I am
+sumptuously ragged about it. But how all the Generals and things
+happened to be out of sight and hearing at the time, I don't know. And
+_still_ this is not the cream of the comedy.
+
+After giving orders for rounding up the animals, I went on to the quarry
+with Corporal Dutton. My dear, _There was Jezebel grazing, as cool as a
+cucumber!_
+
+She still further insulted me by coming up and trying to push her nose
+into my pocket, where I sometimes keep an apple for her.
+
+[Sidenote: ANOTHER MOVE NORTHWARDS]
+
+The guards, you see, had instantly gone in to get her away from the
+horse she was kicking, when we first heard the commotion. The other
+horses had mooned out of the entrance gap, and then, I suppose,
+something--a fly, perhaps--had frightened them, and off they had
+galloped. While "the accursed female," as we sometimes call Jezebel, too
+sensible to stampede, quietly continued feeding. I shall never be taken
+in by her air of innocence again. Never. I don't a bit mind saying I was
+decidedly alarmed. That mare might have been responsible for the death
+of the Corps Commander.
+
+O Jezebel, I wish I could get angry with you and give you a jolly good
+hiding one day. But you know I can't, you dear old thing. I'm writing
+this in the orchard, where the H.Q. horses live, and Jezebel is standing
+sleepily in the shade of her tree. She looks intensely stupid. She
+occasionally tries to flick away a fly with her short tail. Occasionally
+she sighs deeply, with that blubbery, spluttery noise that all horses
+make when they sigh.
+
+
+_August 15._
+
+On the move. This is our first day's trek, and we are at a place where
+we have been before--but not the same billets. I am in a cottage with
+an earth floor (which looks very odd with a hideous drab-coloured
+wall-paper), and small children and hens, both dirty, wander in and out
+of my room. It's too hot to keep the door latched. A swallow's nest in
+the room next door; and the people say that, although the young have
+flown, they still return at night.
+
+
+_August 19._
+
+The Adjutant is away, and won't be returning for some time; so I am
+still acting. And this, together with signal work, etc., is somewhat
+arduous. I live all day in the "office," a very small bivouac in a green
+field. There I sit praying for inspiration, when letters come in marked
+_Urgent_, beginning something like this:
+
+     "LP/3657042--G1.
+
+     "Ref. your memo HC/516342/L12 of 13/8/16, please find A.F. 361B for
+     completion and immediate return."
+
+And I haven't the least idea what I said in my memo HC/516342/L12 of
+13/8/16, and I can't find any record of it. And I can't for the life of
+me make out how I am meant to fill in A.F. 361B, because I haven't the
+least idea what it's all about.
+
+
+_August 26._
+
+[Sidenote: BEHIND KEMMEL]
+
+Impossible to write yesterday, and only a brief scrawl to-day.
+
+The regiment is being scattered over the face of the earth--an O.P.
+here, an O.P. there; a digging-party here, a draining-party there, etc.,
+etc., etc.; not to mention a few on duty as military police _pro tem._,
+others guarding bomb shelters, others reconnoitring new areas for new
+divisions, etc. Dennis is very badly wounded. He can't be moved yet.
+Some bits of shell went into his thigh, up his back, and it's not
+certain yet whether it entered his lungs or not. They are afraid so. He
+was on his tummy at an O.P. A crump got him. Dear old Dennis! I hope
+he'll pull round. Also Clive is very seriously wounded, I fear. Damn!
+
+
+_August 27._
+
+I am Acting Adjutant now. An Adjutant's job is a most hairy job, and I
+sit with drops of perspiration dripping off my brow all day. Never see
+the horses, never get any exercise except for a moment or two.
+
+
+_August 29._
+
+We are probably going to move again soon, and consequently the amount of
+correspondence is vast. Clive is better, I think. Dennis about the
+same. I suppose a thing can go into your lung and not kill you?
+
+
+_September 2._
+
+The Colonel seemed (from a telegram he sent yesterday morning) to be in
+a great hurry for me to come down to the other squadron. So I decided to
+go by train, and send Hunt with the horses. And this is the train
+journey.
+
+The station at ---- quite recovered and tidy after a feeble strafing the
+other day. Even two or three civilians travelling. Not many of the
+military--a hundred or so, perhaps, all waiting and smoking idly, each
+armed with his "Movement Order." The dull boom of guns not excessive,
+though there's a frequent "plom! plom! plom!" of the Archies, and the
+sky is dotted with clusters of pretty little shrapnel clouds. Sometimes
+the crack! crack! crack! crack! of machine guns high up in the blue. It
+makes you feel slightly homesick. I don't quite know why. That sort of
+thing isn't done at home.
+
+[Sidenote: THROUGH HAZEBROUCK]
+
+In comes the train. The French station officials all in a paroxysm of
+excitement because one Tommy throws down a gas helmet for the train to
+run over. Up we clamber. Hale heaves up valise and coat and so forth,
+and retires to a "third," while I feel a beast lounging in this
+luxurious "first." Off we go, and I look out at all the familiar
+country.
+
+There's one of those quaint French notices in the carriage:
+
+    TAISEZ-VOUS!
+    MEFIEZ-VOUS!
+    LES OREILLES ENNEMIES VOUS ECOUTENT!
+
+All too necessary, they tell me.
+
+_Later._--It is getting dark. We stop at a large town that I know well.
+Two hours to wait. I turn in to a Follies show. There is usually one
+going on, run by this or that division, all soldiers, but looking very
+odd in their paint and ruffles. But what a curious concert. The first
+I've seen out here. The comic Scot vastly popular; but even more so are
+hideously sentimental songs all about the last bugle and death and my
+dead friends under the earth and eternal sleep. You know? However, they
+love it, and the dismal piano beats a tinny accompaniment.
+
+Staff officers even are here, and I recognize one Somerset; also Grey,
+who was in the Gun section with Dennis and me, now a Captain. Delightful
+talking over old times.
+
+_Later._--Into the train again. On the platform beforehand I meet a
+gunner subaltern. We talk. He's very well read, and interested in lots
+of the things I love so much. We discuss the war. He knows a lot of the
+billets I know. Evidently we have nearly met out here often before. What
+is that book he is reading? Richard Jefferies? From Jefferies to
+Maeterlinck. What has become of him? War so foreign to that mystic mind.
+Yet his beautiful abbey in Flanders must be in the hands of Fritz, if it
+still exists at all. We talk for about two hours. Then he gets out at
+----. I don't know what his name is, and very likely I won't ever meet
+him again. But out here one makes friends quickly. There are so many of
+us all in the same boat. And one hardly expects ever to meet again. Then
+(alone in the carriage) I doze. The electric light in full blaze, and no
+curtains are down. Stations rather like bad dreams. Soldiers everywhere.
+A great clanking of horse-trucks and gun-carriages. Vast stores of
+timber for huts. Bookstalls open all night. These trains seem to hoot
+and whistle most horribly. Far more noisy than English trains, surely.
+That, combined with all the shouting and clatter of trollies, etc.,
+rather racking in the small hours. At 5 a.m. we arrive at ----, where we
+all change.
+
+_Later._--No one allowed outside the station except officers and
+sergeants. But, dash it all, I can't leave Hale here the whole day. Our
+train leaves at 8.36 to-night. The R.T.O. will be here at 7 a.m. Let's
+see what we can work. Meanwhile (5.30) the platformless station is full
+of men, who have just dumped themselves and their kits down where they
+stood. They haven't finished sleeping. It looks like a battle-field.
+They lie in every attitude, officers among them. Hale is eating from his
+bully-beef tin in silence. A few men stand round a Y.M.C.A. stall
+drinking coffee or eating chocolate, cake, and stuff.
+
+[Sidenote: ABBEVILLE]
+
+_Later._--I got Hale out, and took him to see the cathedral. He said he
+thought it must have cost a lot of money. Not a bad criticism, either.
+Then I let him go his own way, and now it's 1.45 p.m. Had a charming
+lunch--two oeufs a la coque, the, and croissants. Now I'm sitting by
+the side of the river--very peaceful. There's a white goat on the other
+bank, and its reflection is dancing gently all the time.
+
+Several French widows are talking together near the goat, their black
+veils hanging funereally; and there's a small boy with socks and a
+bowler hat, all black, too. Poor dears!
+
+Good heavens alive! there's George! He has just flashed by in a car, red
+cap and all. If only there had been time to hail him! Now for a sleep
+till it's time for tea.
+
+
+_September 5._
+
+This is a part of the line I don't know at all, a most exciting area. I
+have been up several times into what is by the way of being our front
+line, but the whole thing is so chaotic that often the Huns come into
+our trenches and we go into theirs quite by mistake.
+
+I have several times gone right across the open, within full view of
+Fritz (whom I could see), at a distance of 600 yards. I think they must
+all be very confused, also, as there is very little rifle fire and very
+little organized sniping. Nothing but shelling, with the result that for
+miles and miles there's just tumbled earth.
+
+The famous woods you read about are mere scratchy little collections of
+a few tree-stumps splintered and wrecked beyond belief. Things lie
+scattered everywhere in aimless profusion. Muddy rifles, coats, boots,
+and every description of kit, both British and Hun. I have met lots of
+men I know, and everyone is very cheery and hopeful. Fritz is
+withdrawing his big guns--always a good sign. However, the myriads of
+prisoners nearly all look a sound type of man still. They are put to
+work a long way behind the line immediately, which is good.
+
+
+_September 7._
+
+[Sidenote: THE SOMME FRONT]
+
+We have been for some time right up in parts quite destitute of houses
+and villages and shops. All the remnants of villages here are ruins. And
+messing is consequently more difficult. So may I have a large-sized cake
+now and then?
+
+The war isn't over yet, I fear. We live in the usual touch-and-go
+condition.
+
+
+_September 8._
+
+Things hum. Troops like ants all over the ground. In tents, in bivvies,
+in the open, everywhere. And the eternal chain of motor lorries bringing
+up ammunition and supplies. These one sees all over France. But here
+they block half the roads. Well, yesterday morning I rode out alone with
+the Colonel and two orderlies. We went to some high ground from which
+you can see it all, dismounted, and sent the horses back. In front of
+us, in the valley, a wrecked town with the strangest thing on the
+still-standing tower. I hope to make a picture of it if ever I can get
+any time again.
+
+Later in the day from one of our O.P.'s I began a sketch of the whole
+panorama of the battle. Desolate ragged country, torn with shell wounds;
+the poor scarecrow trees like arms stretched up to heaven for help.
+Fields that once were golden with corn now grey and scarred with white
+trenches that look like a network of pale worms lying where they died.
+
+Now, from another O.P. I'm looking at the arid chaos below. Arid and
+lonely-looking, but not silent. A strafe is on. Seems to be getting
+louder and more continuous. We passed on our way here a great naval gun
+crashing out death to the burrowing Huns. Swallow doesn't like naval
+guns.
+
+From flimsy net shelters flash the expensive guns, and the bombardment
+gathers strength, gathers volume, until you'd think something must
+burst--the world or the universe: either might split from end to end.
+The dust and smoke are gradually making everything invisible. Crumps
+come whistling and heaving up great clouds of heavy blackness. We look
+at our watches. Zero hour in five minutes. The aeroplanes buzzing aloft,
+and the sausages sitting among the low clouds, inert and so
+vulnerable-looking. Can there be anything left? Can a single soul live?
+
+
+[Illustration: TRENCHES BETWEEN FRICOURT AND LA BOISELLE
+They don't look much like trenches, because they were battered to
+pieces. A 'dump' on the near horizon was hit by a Boche shell. It blazed
+and crackled and smouldered all night, a drifting column of dull pink
+smoke.]
+
+
+_September 9._
+
+Surely we shall get through. Even in spite of the rain. The rain has
+made the country into a quagmire.
+
+Reconnoitred the front trenches to-day with the Colonel, in a particular
+part where everything is at sixes and sevens, and no one quite
+knows what we haven't or have got. Most odd. Shells of all calibres
+bursting on every side--corpses, odours unspeakable.
+
+[Sidenote: DELVILLE WOOD]
+
+You see, things are expected to happen soon, and so I'm anxious to know
+all about it. This part of the line is terrific.
+
+Where we are, and for miles and miles around, myriads of troops,
+cavalry, artillery, everything, all camped in the open--no concealment.
+Mud? Why, everyone is mud, up to the eyes, and so are the horses. This
+big movement has quite dislocated the ordinary trench warfare, and now
+all over the dreary uplands are trenches hurriedly dug by the Hun and
+then abandoned. Trenches that often barely shelter you above the knees.
+Chaos, chaos. Rifles lying to rust in the mud, duds everywhere, men
+sitting in dug-outs, not knowing what they are expected to do next.
+Others in mere scratched-out shelters or in actual shell holes.
+Sometimes they sing. Often they are asleep. Wreckage indescribable.
+Shrapnel cracking into black clouds close by. Enormous and magnificent
+H.E.'s hurling up black earth and red earth, and smoke that drifts
+slowly and solidly away to limbo. Poor dead men lying about, and dead
+horses, too. And in the trenches this limitless porridge of mud.
+Cr-r-r-ump! go the crumps searching out a battery. But oh the
+woods--the poor scarecrow woods. I was in a famous wood that looked
+positively devilish in its sinister nakedness. And it's September, too,
+when woods are so often at their loveliest. Not a leaf--not one single
+leaf; and, instead of undergrowth, just tossed earth, fuses, a boot, a
+coat, some wire, and above-ground dead men. Below-ground (or as far
+below as they can get in the time) live men.
+
+The Boche dug-outs are marvellous. They are really works of art. So
+solidly, even beautifully built. I went into one that had wooden pillars
+supporting the roof like some baronial hall, with neat little cupboards,
+tables, beds, and everything complete. There were two of our M.M.G.
+officers sleeping there, and we left them sleeping. But emerge out into
+daylight, and ye gods! the confusion makes you feel awed. A village is
+usually a heap of rubble, with here and there a bit of a gaudy enamelled
+coffee-pot or something; a geranium from a window, still growing; a
+china egg, a bit of a chair, a bit of an iron gateway. And as far as the
+eye can see in this particular region, just undulating stretches of
+tormented earth. All the old game of never showing above the parapet is
+quite disregarded, for often there is no parapet. Time after time the
+Huns could have seen us, and I saw lots of them running across gaps. You
+see, no sniping or anything like that can be organized yet. Huns often
+come into our lines by mistake, and we do likewise. And when you are not
+actually in close view of them, you go across the open. If you get cut
+off by a barrage you just wait till it's over.
+
+I have been round all our M.G. positions and other Detachments.
+
+
+_September 10._
+
+[Sidenote: TOWARDS FLERS]
+
+About 5 p.m. the mess cook came and said he had been unable to get
+enough food in for the morrow, as the expected hampers from England had
+not arrived, and the district was so packed with other troops. So we
+decided to get some hares or partridges. But it's forbidden to shoot
+game. Very well, we wouldn't shoot them. We'd ride them down. The
+country behind is entirely open. No hedges. Just gently undulating
+uplands. The crops are all cut. So three of us set out. The orderly-room
+work had almost been finished, and the remainder could wait. Jezebel was
+brought round for me, Chloe for Roger, and Minotaur for the Colonel. The
+Colonel's orderly, Corporal Orchard, following on Shotover. We rode back
+to the more open country where there are few troops, and then started
+the drive. Jezebel on the right, Chloe next, Shotover next, and Minotaur
+on the left, at intervals of 20 yards or so.
+
+It had been decided that, if a hare got up, even while we were after
+partridges, we must chase the hare.
+
+Well, presently a covey got up, and away we galloped up a long slope.
+Suddenly a wild tally-ho from Roger. A hare had got up and was lepping
+across Jezebel's line. So Jezebel fairly flattened herself out to keep
+the hare in. But the hare was across before she could get wide enough.
+
+Then the hare doubled back and we swung round, so that now Minotaur was
+on the right. Hooroosh down the hill. The hare was gaining. There was a
+minute brick enclosure a quarter of a mile ahead. The hare was making
+for that. And gained it. Check. We surrounded the enclosure and Corporal
+Orchard dismounted and went in. After about ten minutes out popped the
+hare on t'other side. Loud yells, and after her again. She made for some
+high ground where there was a small wood. "Cut her off," signalled the
+Colonel wildly.
+
+Impossible to cut off the hare. She gained the wood, which we
+surrounded. But, oh silly hare! she came out the other side. Minotaur
+after her like an arrow.
+
+Then she tried to get away across Jezebel's front. But Jezebel was too
+quick, and Chloe came up in support.
+
+Then the hare doubled again through Shotover and Minotaur, and we swung
+about. The hare was getting tired. She had run about three miles. She
+then doubled back again through Chloe and Jezebel.
+
+[Sidenote: CHASING THE HARE]
+
+But meanwhile the horses were all getting dark with sweat, and although
+a low line of upland hid us, we knew we were approaching some reserve
+wire. The hare must not gain that wire.
+
+She was dead beat and going very slow, flopping along, and looked as if
+she would tumble head over heels any second. We were close behind her.
+
+She got into some long grass 20 yards away from the wire, and
+disappeared from view. We had got her. Corporal Orchard dismounted and
+began beating the grass for her. There! Just missed her. She flopped on
+a few yards, and Corporal Orchard dashed after. Then he tripped and
+fell. The hare came out of cover and lolloped towards the wire. Yells
+from Roger and the Colonel.
+
+_And the hare got there first!_
+
+Inwardly I laughed with joy and relief. Thank goodness that little hare
+got away. Corporal Orchard took over the horses, and we went in amongst
+the wire, but we never found her. The weeds had grown tall, and were
+perfect cover for the poor wee beastie. I sometimes say what I think,
+but such views are naturally neither understood nor taken seriously.
+And the Major, bless him! likes me to do this type of thing because he
+thinks it is good for me. "We must really try and teach you to be more
+of a sportsman, you know. Sporting instinct. What? Every Englishman
+should have it!" This all very good-humouredly, and I answer, laughing:
+"Aha, sir. You see I know better." Which merely stirs some jovial spirit
+to stand up and propose: "Gentlemen, fox-hunting!" You see?
+
+
+_September 12._
+
+The next act will shortly begin. We are all very hopeful. Certain
+signs.... Fritz very nervous. Of that there can be no doubt at all.
+Prisoners betray it quite unwillingly. Poor Fritz! He comes to attention
+when we go up to him and ask him if he is fairly happy, which he is
+(with a smile) invariably. He talks good English, and wishes the war
+would end.
+
+Some of our machine gunners, including Clare, were done in the other
+day, and they put up a biscuit tin, with their names pierced in with
+nail holes, to mark the spot. This war is the quaintest, most
+incongruous show.
+
+
+[Illustration: GIRD TRENCH
+Gird Trench was only won after repeated attacks. It was the main German
+defence of GEUDECOURT. While this sketch was being made things
+were comparatively quiet. And the innumerable people living underground
+could get a little sleep.]
+
+
+_September 15._
+
+Zero hour has come and gone. The show is a peach. Fritz is scuttling
+back with us on his tail. We are to creep up, and as soon as Fritz
+is beyond his last line of trenches (which he jolly nearly is now) up
+and through we hope to go.
+
+
+_September 20._
+
+[Sidenote: TOWARDS GEUDECOURT]
+
+We are long past Fritz's first line; past his second line; at his third
+line; and his fourth line he is wildly digging now--places for his
+M.G.'s wire, etc. But he's very, very hard put to it. We have almost all
+the high ground. Our guns are at it day and night. Trench warfare no
+longer exists. A few hastily dug holes, a few short lines of trench,
+mostly battered to pieces, and that's all. It's almost open fighting.
+Even the infantry come up across the open. No communication trenches,
+nothing of that sort. The crump holes are continuous. There's scarcely
+an inch of ground that isn't a crump hole.
+
+I was up in an interesting wood this morning with the Colonel. Now, this
+will give you some idea of how dislocated and above-ground everything
+is:
+
+We wanted to go to a place the other side of the wood. When we reached
+the middle of the wood, where a new O.P. of ours has been established,
+Fritz put up a barrage on the edge of the wood. Very well, then. We just
+waited at the O.P. till the barrage was over, and then calmly walked
+out. The wood is only a few shattered stumps of trees, and the place
+where undergrowth once was is one continuous sea of earth thrown about
+in every conceivable shape, with dead Tommies and dead Fritzes lying
+side by side. So the wood isn't much cover, you can imagine.
+
+On the far side of the wood is beautiful rolling country, but not green.
+It's all brown, just a mess of earth. It's pitted with holes just like
+sand after a hailstorm. In the distance you can see real lovely trees,
+but nothing grows where the strafing is. Overhead the martins flicker
+and swoop, and starlings sail by in circling clouds, while the colossal
+noises crash and boom away merrily.
+
+Ought I, perhaps, not to talk of these things? Does it worry you to
+think of crumps bursting and so on? But, really, it seems quite ordinary
+and in the day's work here. Men talk of crumps as you would talk of
+bread and butter. That is, perhaps, why letters from home that talk
+about homely things--cows and lavender and the new chintz--are so
+welcome.
+
+Besides, good heavens! don't you know that there's not a man in France
+but knows that the best-beloved ones at home are having a far worse time
+than we are having here? Wet clothes? Mud? Shells a-bursting, guns
+a-popping? Even a wound, perhaps? Pish! No one _thinks_ at all out
+here. There isn't time. Most of the people out here are perfectly happy
+and merry, really. The sort of "long-drawn-out-agony" touch is, I think,
+rare.
+
+I'm writing this in a jolly Boche dug-out, all panelled and cosy.
+Jezebel and Swallow and a new pack mare I've got are in a valley that's
+hardly ever touched, and in fine, all's well.
+
+
+_September 24._
+
+[Sidenote: TEAR SHELLS]
+
+Tear shells or "lachrymatory shells." They haven't been putting many
+over lately, apparently. But they put some over the other day, and they
+are so amusing that I must describe them to you.
+
+The Colonel and I were up trying to find a "working-party" from the
+regiment. The regiment is sadly split up at present into various parties
+doing various jobs in various places, all unpleasant. Better than
+infantry work, but still unpleasant.
+
+We rode up much closer than we have ridden before, and left the
+Colonel's orderly and Hale in a bit of a valley with Minotaur, Jezebel,
+Hob, and Tank. Tank is a new mare I've got. Hale was riding her, as I
+never take Swallow closer than I can help.
+
+We dismounted in this small valley, and the Colonel's orderly and Hale
+were given orders to move if any shells were put over too near them.
+
+Then the Colonel and I went up through a wood that is just a few
+splintered stumps now.
+
+We passed behind several batteries, and I thought to myself: "Dash it
+all! I know my eyes can't be watering because of the noise. What the
+deuce is the matter? I hope the Colonel won't notice."
+
+However, on we waded and plodded. Suddenly the Colonel stopped, and
+exclaimed: "Oh damnation! This is perfect nonsense." His eyes were like
+tomatoes, and the tears were rolling down his cheeks!
+
+By this time we could hardly see at all, and it dawned on us that we
+must hastily put on our tear goggles, which we had never used before,
+but always, of course, carry. They go in the satchel along with the two
+gas helmets.
+
+Presently we met some infantry coming back, all safely begoggled. The
+Huns, they told us, were dropping tear shells just into that valley in
+front, where our working-party was supposed to be. You can tell them
+(the tear shells), they said, by the fluttering sound, and they knock up
+no earth and make very little smoke.
+
+Sure enough, as soon as we got over the brow there they were. They make
+a foolish wobbly, wavy sound as they come over, and look most innocent.
+So they are really if you get your goggles on in time. But if one bursts
+close to you, and you haven't got goggles on, why, then you'll be as
+blind as an owl, and you'll weep like a shower bath.
+
+[Sidenote: BETWEEN HIGH WOOD AND FLERS]
+
+Then the absurd thing was that we couldn't find the working-party.
+Plenty of dead Huns, but nobody alive. Not a sign. Only crumps dropping
+here and there and everywhere. So we found a bit of a trench that led
+back round the side of the wood. The front line trenches were only very
+lightly held, partly because they are almost completely blown in. And we
+could get no information as to the working-party at all.
+
+Presently we saw why. The Huns had put up a barrage across the valley
+they were coming up. We knew they would come up this other valley, as
+they had to report on their way to H.Q., ---- Division. So we got into a
+hole and waited.
+
+After about half an hour the barrage lifted and up came our
+working-party none the worse. It is a most amazing war. People literally
+dodge shells and things as you might dodge snow-balls.
+
+When we arrived back at the place where we left our two men, they also
+were not to be seen.
+
+After some time and anxious inquiries for two men with four horses, we
+at last discovered them nearly half a mile away. Fritz had put some
+heavy stuff over fairly near, and they had moved.
+
+"A very interesting bit of the line isn't it, Hale?" I said as we moved
+off. "Yes, sir," he said, adding with a fierce frown, "but not very
+_safe_, sir."
+
+And then we all laughed. Hale does frown so when he makes one of his
+oracular utterances.
+
+
+[Illustration: A HOUSE IN GEUDECOURT
+Here, as in many of these sketches, there are no people to be seen, for
+the simple reason that they are all underground in dug-outs.]
+
+
+_September 29._
+
+It's up to us to reconnoitre carefully every time there is a move
+forward, so as to see the new ground.
+
+One of the most curious and interesting things is this: the Boche rarely
+wastes. He only puts his crumps and pip-squeaks just where he thinks (or
+knows) our batteries are, and our infantry want to be, and our horses
+would be likely to be (if they weren't somewhere else). So that
+gradually you begin to track out safe routes. Don't go near the edge of
+---- Wood, but 200 yards inside the wood, on the north side, you're
+pretty comfy. Don't go near the mangled remains of ---- village, but
+keep to the right of it until you get to the wrecked aeroplane, and then
+turn down the remains of ---- trench, and you probably won't be touched.
+That sort of thing.
+
+[Sidenote: BOCHE DUG-OUTS]
+
+I've been sleeping in the most superb Boche dug-out. Very deep; I
+should think 30 feet down. The inside is pillared rather like the
+studio, and cretonned all over with maroon-coloured stuff instead of
+wall-paper. There are lovely little cupboards everywhere, and doors and
+window-frames just like a real house. The windows, of course, only look
+out on to an air-shaft, so it's very dark, and you have to have candles
+all the time. The windows have no glass, of course, as that would be
+shattered to smithereens by the vibrations. Then there's an arch and
+more steps down lower still, into the bedroom for two.
+
+Yesterday, being rather misty, I thought as follows:
+
+"It is too foggy to see what Fritz is doing. No attack is intended or
+expected. The Colonel is at corps H.Q. Swallow and Jezebel and Tank are
+safe in ---- valley. Roger is still here as Adjutant. Why not an
+afternoon off?"
+
+So picture a holiday-maker armed with a revolver, two gas helmets, tear
+goggles, some sandwiches, and a large empty haversack. Now where to go?
+What about ---- trench and all round ---- village, even, perhaps, a
+lightning five minutes in the village itself? We have just taken the
+village, but it's rather an unhealthy spot at present.
+
+---- trench is a new trench that poor Fritz dug just before he was
+driven out of it. I had seen lots of dead Fritzes there the day before.
+Also there were reports of curious things flung out into the mud in and
+round the village.
+
+[Sidenote: TROPHIES]
+
+So I set forth. And at ---- met another fellow I knew, and the affair
+became neither more nor less than a search for souvenirs. Here is a
+list:
+
+     1. A few buttons with double-tailed lions.
+
+     2. Four shoulder-straps with the figure 6 in red. This indicated a
+     division which has been opposite us for some time and is quite
+     exhausted, I think.
+
+     3. One haversack and one respirator haversack.
+
+     4. One rosary.
+
+     5. Five different sorts of bayonets from different regiments. These
+     I thought we might hang up.
+
+     6. Four tassels. They are worn by Fritz rather in the same sort of
+     way as lanyards are worn. Quite pretty, though rather soiled and
+     worn.
+
+     7. A bit of a wing of a crushed aeroplane that is lying on the
+     brown, feverish earth like a dead sea-gull.
+
+     8. A brass spring very beautifully made, that I am going to have
+     made into a bracelet for you. Also from the aeroplane.
+
+     9. A cardboard box for signal flares. _Signal Patronen_ they are
+     labelled. I threw the flares away, as they might go pop _en route_.
+
+     10. A jolly bit of gilded carving from a house in ----
+
+     11. Now then for No. 11! A bit of embroidery. I think it is a
+     vestment of sorts. It's white, and there's heavy gold embroidery at
+     the sides. It is a cloak of some description, but the top part,
+     where there should be a collar or something, is gone. Then
+     11A is a piece of black and silver embroidery. It was all
+     very muddy and riddled with shrapnel or bits of crump, so I just
+     cut off the only sound bit. Both these things are exceedingly
+     beautiful. They are probably vestments, because they were quite
+     near what must have been the church. I am sure it must have been
+     the church, although I hadn't a map--first, because I saw the
+     village in the distance some time ago, while the church was still
+     standing, and therefore I know the church's situation; and,
+     secondly, because I saw remains of large pillars, and a few bits of
+     what was once a font amongst the debris.
+
+There now. Isn't that a good haul! It's not easy to get anything worth
+sending home, because everything is so utterly smashed up.
+
+
+_October 2._
+
+Jezebel and Swallow and Tank have all been clipped trace high. I am
+getting rather attached to Tank. She is so modest and unselfish--a
+contrast to Jezebel. She never expects little treats, and seems quite
+surprised when I give her anything. Swallow and Jezebel always neigh
+when they see my electric torch coming towards them after dinner (while
+we are back in these safe places). But Tank is very shy of the light,
+and thinks it will bite her.
+
+Swallow is getting much better, and really seems to understand that the
+shells and guns and things probably won't hurt him. We have been most
+extraordinarily lucky. The troop that got through nearly to ---- the
+other day, hadn't a single casualty, although Dick's own mare was shot
+under him and a great many other horses were wounded. The squadron of
+---- were very badly scuppered, I fear. But, anyhow, we all feel that
+Lloyd George is right. We are just beginning to win.
+
+
+_October 5._
+
+It is a glorious day. Such clouds. Swallow kicked up his heels and
+played about like a kitten when Hunt took him to water this morning.
+It's extraordinary how used the horses are getting to trenches and
+wire, etc. At first they were rather afraid to jump these sudden deep
+ditches, but now they pop across like rabbits.
+
+
+_October 17._
+
+[Sidenote: ARCHIE]
+
+Yesterday some Hun aeroplanes got across and came right above this camp,
+a comfortable way behind the front line. Heavily strafed by our Archies.
+The blue sky was dotted all over with the pretty little white clouds of
+shrapnel.
+
+Sergeant Pritchard and I were standing close to Flannagan (one of the
+men's horses), and the men were at stables. We were all looking up and
+longing to see a Hun aeroplane hit, when suddenly "s-s-s-swish, plop!"
+just behind me. It was one of the Archie shrapnel cases. It buried
+itself deep in the ground 3 yards from where we were standing. We dug it
+up, and I'll bring it home for you. If it isn't too tediously heavy.
+
+Of course, Archie shrapnel cases all come down, and you see hundreds of
+them lying about; but I've never had one so close before. They sometimes
+fall broadside on, and sometimes end on, in which case they bury
+themselves fairly deep. All the Hun aeroplanes got away, alas!
+
+
+_October 26._
+
+Once more I'm going up to the strange dead village of ----. In many ways
+I shall be sorry to go back to comfort and billets, because the
+material for pictures here is very wonderful. You shall see several
+small things (the powers that be call it waste of time!), and it's
+infuriating to think that more can't be done.
+
+I tell you, if you were here, and if I could paint a bit every day, I
+should be quite happy. The "subjects" are endless, and in particular I
+long to do great big stretches of this bleak brown land. Well, it can't
+be helped, so it's no good thinking about it.
+
+
+_October 29._
+
+We are moving to a "back area" to-morrow.
+
+
+[Illustration: A WOUNDED TANK
+This Tank got hit as it was walking over a house in FLERS. They
+covered it up with tarpaulins to prevent the Hun aeroplanes from
+obtaining too much information about it. The black stuff is shrapnel.
+The pink clouds are sent up by crumps as they explode amongst the
+remains of the brick houses.]
+
+
+_November 1._
+
+It's a superb day, and we are back at ----, one of our old billets,
+right away from the beastliness. And although leave won't be for another
+week or two, still, it will come soon. And Swallow is in tremendous
+spirits.
+
+Here is a drawing done surreptitiously of a tank in full view of Fritz.
+You see those little stumps of trees? Well, I'll tell you what those are
+called when we meet, and also what village is just on their left. You
+may say it was stupid to sit in full view of Fritz, but it was the day
+after an advance, and there's hardly ever anything doing then in
+the way of sniping. The guns, of course, are all pooping off, but they
+weren't shelling just there, so it was quite safe. This drawing gives
+you some idea of the desolation, but none of the unevenness of the
+ground. You can't walk in a bee-line for three yards without getting
+into a hole. The last time I was in those parts, by the way, I came on a
+rather jolly cottage wineglass that had been thrown out into some soft
+mud, and was not even cracked.
+
+
+_November 6._
+
+[Sidenote: COCQUEREL]
+
+An extraordinary change. Let me now give you an idea.
+
+We are in a pretty little country village miles and miles away, and
+(although one of Fritz's aeroplanes flew over the church as bold as
+brass just before we got in) the quiet and peace of the place is very
+refreshing. And, droll to relate, I'm writing this in bed, with a touch
+of flu--such a bed, too, all soft and billowy. In ordinary life it would
+be condemned as a "feather" bed, but now it is a bed for princes.
+
+And the room. A rather dark old-fashioned paper, an old clock ticking,
+an old shining chest of drawers with a marble top, and clothes hanging
+on pegs. Hale has arranged the pistol, and ammunition, and maps, and
+gas helmets, and steel helmet, and spare kit, with great elaboration,
+all over the room. At the present moment he is "sweeping out" with the
+appropriate hissing noises. The dust will, I hope, subside during the
+course of the day.
+
+Hunt has got Jezebel, Swallow, and Tank into a disused barn, where they
+will be warm and happy.
+
+Out of the window I can see hens pecking in an orchard, and an old grey
+pony browsing. The leaves are yellow, and there's no wind.
+
+The old man and the old lady to whom the cottage belong have brought me
+in some little "remedes," which Tim refuses to let me have. One is what
+the old man (an ex-chemist) calls "salicite de metal," and the other is
+what the old lady calls a "remede de bonne femme." You rub yourself with
+it all over every two hours!
+
+Tick, tick, tick, tick. Lovely! The old clock is rumbling. It is about
+to strike twelve.
+
+It has struck twelve--no, not struck twelve, rather it has buzzed
+twelve, like some old happy bee.
+
+The hens are still pecking about in the orchard, and the grey pony is
+rubbing himself against a tree.
+
+All so cosy and delicious. Now for a doze.
+
+
+_November 7._
+
+[Sidenote: DOZING]
+
+Here's a poem. It's called
+
+HENS.
+
+    At the end of the war
+            (Ring, bells, merry bells!)
+              We intend
+            To keep hens,
+              Me and Helen.
+            (Ring, bells!)
+              Such hens!
+            (Merry bells!)
+    And though all our hens' eggs be surrounded by shells,
+    We shall laugh and not care;
+    For there won't be no war,
+    And no hell any more,
+    While Helen is there
+    With the hens.
+
+I've just made that up, and the inspiration of so profound an epic has
+made me want to doze again. Such a lot of dozing!
+
+
+_November 12._
+
+In to-day's letter I enclose a couple of field post-cards which I found
+on a Boche dug-out bed-hole.
+
+I've been so busy these last days, up till late hours, and writing has
+been "na-poo." Leave? Yes, leave will come in time. Probably the first
+half of December.
+
+How maddening it is for poor old Tom! It's most damnable hard luck being
+kept there without leave such a long time. And I expect that he also
+has rather lost interest. At first the men were a great source of
+interest, and the horses and everything. Then France and the front were
+very interesting. Lastly, being under fire was very interesting. But now
+that we are back in Rest, I begin to feel I shall be rather sorry to go
+through it again. And Tom has had so much of it. Yes, he ought to come
+home.
+
+The cottage people here have those lovely pale salmon winter
+chrysanthemums in their gardens. Don't you like them?
+
+Since we arrived in this wee village a week ago, I haven't been on a
+horse once, and have never seen anything outside the village itself,
+which consists of one street and a side-lane.
+
+
+_November 14._
+
+I wasn't able to write yesterday, and there may be several blank days to
+come.
+
+Roger is temporarily away, and I am in charge. The thing that's
+happening is this: A and B are coming down to us, and others are going
+to relieve them. So the arrangements and correspondence are vast. All
+the billeting of this town is pushed on to my hands, too; and though
+it's only a small village, there's a good lot to do. I can't collect any
+thoughts to write to you. You understand, I know, and so I needn't say
+more. I'll write again at length when things settle down. This sounds
+muddled. But I count on your understanding that I've got more work to do
+than I can manage.
+
+
+_November 16._
+
+[Sidenote: THE OTHER SQUADRONS ARRIVE]
+
+To-day, by some amazing fluke, there's a lull. One squadron has gone.
+Sir John is on his way down. Julian starts early next week, and Gerald a
+few days later. So within a fortnight we shall all be together. Which
+will be good.
+
+Some infantry came in from the line to-day. Oh ye gods! the British
+infantry! No rewards, honours, no fame, can ever be enough for them. We
+have not yet gone through what they have to go through, but we have been
+in and out amongst them all the time, and we know. Thank goodness this
+spell of dry weather seems to have come for a few days at least. Cold at
+night is nothing. It's wet at night that just kills men right and left.
+Alan died yesterday morning. Died of exposure. He caught a chill while
+we were up in front, and then got much worse, and it finally developed
+into peritonitis and pneumonia. And now he, too, is dead. We were all
+very fond of Alan.
+
+Death is such a little thing. A change of air--no more. Death is the
+last day of Term, the last day of the Year. Regret? That's because we
+don't understand, quite.
+
+
+_November 17._
+
+I sent you off another beastly little scrap of paper to-day, because it
+was impossible to write more. Here (7 p.m.) is another moment, so I
+snatch it.
+
+Listen. Of course it is true that leave has been cancelled, but we hear
+(Rumour) that this is only for a few days owing to submarines. _If_
+leave reopens again, as seems likely therefore, I go next. I shall have
+to hand over Orderly Room and all current correspondence, etc. That
+means, with luck, I leave here on the 2nd. Don't, of course, count on
+this; but let's toy with the idea.
+
+
+_November 23._
+
+I am sitting in the sun, having read your letter. The valley of the ----
+is below me, a mile wide, all reed-beds and half submerged willows, with
+the main stream lying like a blue snake amongst pale acres of sedge.
+
+Damn! I was going to write a long and cosy letter, but was called back.
+I had escaped for an hour from Orderly Room with your letter and a
+sketchbook, and was caught in the act. No time now.
+
+
+_November 25._
+
+[Sidenote: THE SOMME VALLEY]
+
+A few more moments with you before you go to bed.
+
+Yes, isn't it funny how we seem to be talking face to face! And to every
+question of mine you reply in three days' time and _vice versa_. It
+always sounds to me like this, rather:
+
+              QUESTION.         ANSWER.
+
+    _Mon._   Isn't it cold?             None.
+    _Tues._  Have you seen mother?      None.
+    _Wed._   Are you happy?             None.
+    _Thurs._ How are you all?           Freezing.
+    _Fri._   When did I see you last?   Only yesterday.
+    _Sat._   May I have a cake!         Yes, very.
+    _Sun._   How is Queen Anne?         Much better.
+    _Mon._   None.                      Last April.
+    _Tues._  None.                      I'll send one.
+    _Wed._   None.                      Dead.
+
+Don't you find it's a bit like that? What question can I have asked a
+week ago to which the answer is a rabbit? So tiresome when we want to
+talk at very close range.
+
+As to leave--well let's not talk about that. Every dog has his day.
+
+You know the dog who has been shut up in a kennel for a long time? Or
+the dog who has been locked up in an empty house for a long time? It'll
+be a mixture of these.
+
+Well, the day will come.
+
+
+_November 27._
+
+Can't write properly because it's very cold and I've been riding, and
+that makes one's fingers like pink bananas. They don't seem to answer to
+the bridle. There's an awful noise of hissing going on. Hale and Hunt
+are busy on the horses.
+
+
+_November 28._
+
+A box will arrive containing another Bristol ball, which I discovered in
+a cottage here, and bought for 1fr. 50c. Rather a jolly green one,
+biggish. Also I am enclosing the wineglass from Geudecourt, which I
+mentioned some time ago. There can't be any harm in mentioning this
+name, as we have left that area some time now. I have got several
+sketches of other places round about there, which I hope you will like.
+Won't it be fun, when the time comes, looking at them. To-day Hunt came
+round in a great state about the horses. Jezebel had pulled up her
+shackle, and was in "one of her moods," as Hunt always describes it. She
+had been kicking both Tank and Swallow with great violence. He had left
+Hale trying to get her quiet, and rushed up to report.
+
+She was quiet again when I got down, and Hale had tied her up
+successfully.
+
+[Sidenote: THE PRUDENT SERGEANT]
+
+But the point of telling you of this episode is that meanwhile it was
+getting time for the post to go. Prudent Sergeant Marsden (Orderly Room
+sergeant) observed that I hadn't addressed the letter yet or signed it
+outside. So he did it himself! "You very seldom write any letters to
+other addresses, you see, sir, so I thought I'd better address it
+myself. I thought it would be _inadvisable_ to miss a post, and I
+thought the young lady would forward it on if it was not for her!"
+
+It made me laugh as I haven't laughed for a long time. Wasn't it nice
+and thoughtful. He tells me he duly forged my signature in the left-hand
+bottom corner.
+
+Jorrocks sends his love. "Your little filly" he always calls you.
+
+
+_November 29._
+
+About leave. There's no more chance of it at present, I think, as we are
+going up to the line again in a week or two, and we want to work off all
+the men, who haven't had any leave at all, before moving up mudwards,
+when all leave will be stopped. We are engaged at present in
+practically rebuilding and making sanitary an entire French village, and
+in "training," which means all the old dismal tedium of manoeuvres
+plus spit and polish.
+
+These villages are most amazingly ill-built. Swallow this morning lashed
+out on being bitten by Jezebel, and (dear silly Swallow!) instead of
+hitting Jezebel, she brought down half the wall of the shed in which
+they live, which frightened her to such an extent, Hunt tells me, that
+she allowed Jezebel to eat all her food at midday stables.
+
+
+_November 30._
+
+We move next week, I think, or possibly the week after.
+
+We are not going back to quite the same part of the line, but near it.
+It will be new country to me altogether, and to everyone else concerned.
+
+Poor Swallow, poor Jezebel, poor Tank, I'd give anything to shelter you
+three; but, alas! I fear you are going to have a nasty time of it now.
+All clipped, too. It's Swallow particularly that I tremble for. He does
+so throw up the sponge. Tank copies Bird in everything, so she ought to
+pull through all right.
+
+
+_December 1._
+
+[Sidenote: AMIENS CATHEDRAL]
+
+All leave is cancelled again, at any rate in this army--possibly on
+account of the move, possibly on account of nasty fish in the sea.
+However, the telegram says "until further notice," which usually means
+for a short time only. Not that it affects me, but it's bad luck on some
+of the men who were just off.
+
+Now about Xmas. I have got a new crop, thank you ever so much, that I
+bought at a town near here.
+
+A beautiful cathedral town.
+
+With doors all padded up with sand-bags, the great cathedral towers
+above the town, and is seen for miles and miles. A good effort. What fun
+they must have had building it. What they believed then they expressed
+in outward and visible form. What we think now is (or ought to be) very
+different indeed from what they thought then. But I can't remember
+having ever seen anything that _begins_ to express what we think (or
+ought to think) now.
+
+Everyone in the Church of England now seems to me to think _almost
+exactly_ what was thought when this cathedral was built! If this war
+achieves nothing else, I pray with all my mind, and all my soul, and all
+my strength, that all the sects and all the churches may suddenly feel
+tired of all the 1001 little methods of procedure, and say: "Damn it
+all! what does all this ancient paraphernalia mean to us? Is God quite
+so complicated and involved as we have supposed? Everything else in the
+world progresses. Thought progresses. Let us take a deep breath, and
+realize that religion ought to be more 'into the future' than even
+Zeppelins or Tanks, please."
+
+
+[Illustration: EXPLOSION OF AN AMUNITION DUMP
+The smoke from a large explosion usually assumes a queer tree-like form
+and disperses slowly.]
+
+
+_December 2._
+
+Just been superintending the burying of some horses. A curious job. You
+have to disembowel them first. Quite ghoulish. And then head and legs
+are cut off, and the whole is buried in a hole 12 feet deep. Up there
+they often lie about for some time, and get as smelly as dead human
+beings. Back here it all has to be done prestissimo.
+
+The strange thing is that, whereas before the war I should have felt
+sick and possibly dreamt about it, now it seems merely more boring than
+most other things of the kind.
+
+Up there Tommies and Honourables eat their lunch of sandwiches with lots
+and lots of dead people in varying stages of decomposition all round. An
+odour more hideous than anything you have ever imagined. But you get
+used to it.
+
+[Sidenote: TALKING ABOUT HOME]
+
+"How unpleasant they are to-day," you say to anyone you are with.
+And the answer is probably just a laugh. Then you go on (if things are
+quiet) to discuss an imaginary day at home. You would smile.
+
+We actually discuss everybody's clothes, the things in the room, the
+shape of the fireplace, the look of the tea-things and the comfiness of
+the chairs.
+
+And we always end up by saying: "And then after that I shall do
+absolutely _Nothing_ for a fortnight!"
+
+
+_December 3._
+
+December. Frost on the trees, all fairy-like in this dense mist. Not a
+sound. The sun quite small and white and far away. And if we were on the
+Cotswolds, I expect we should go out for a bit of a walk, just to warm
+up, after breakfast.
+
+
+_December 4._
+
+A staff job has been in the air several days. It may or may not come
+off. I'm not very keen about it in many ways. But I've a feeling that I
+could do it rather well, and so I'm not sure that I oughtn't to accept.
+
+Jezebel and Swallow have quarrelled. Isn't it awful. Hunt has had to
+put Tank in between them.
+
+Jezebel kicked Swallow, and the blood fairly spouted out--got her in the
+leg, and she lost her temper, and began lashing out. Hunt, with great
+presence of mind, threw a bucket of water over them both. And as soon as
+they were quiet, dear, good, demure little Tank was put in between them
+as buffer.
+
+It's a most dreadful nuisance. They used to get on so well together. I
+hope they will leave that curious little Tank alone. Swallow is as lame
+as a cat now. The accursed female is very exasperating, I fear. Hunt
+quite irritated me for a moment when he remarked, after the incident:
+"Oh, it's all right, sir. She was in one of her moods." I pointed out to
+him that it was not all right. Whereupon he took it into his head that I
+was strafing him, and muttered sulkily: "Well, sir, I must say I never
+did like Abroad."
+
+Which made me laugh to such an extent that I got a sort of fit of
+laughing (don't you know?) and couldn't stop. Eventually I had to go
+away. He looked so comic and so dejected, and his use of the word Abroad
+(as if it were a country in itself) always makes me laugh idiotically. I
+haven't seen him since, and it will be difficult to explain the apparent
+frivolity.
+
+Things have been very complicated just lately owing to our having to
+make arrangements about taking over this new bit of line.
+
+
+_December 5._
+
+[Sidenote: CONCERNING WORK]
+
+One of the many things the war has taught us, I think, is the
+comparative equality of all work. Work depends almost entirely on the
+actual number of hours per diem, don't you think?
+
+Certainly brain work is more tiring than spade work. But I'll guarantee
+that the man who does eight hours' brain work is not _much_ more tired
+than the man who does eight hours' spade work.
+
+The only difference is that open-air work means better health, and
+consequently more power to work long hours.
+
+But I really do believe that, for example, a nurse's day's work (either
+for wounded or babies) is _just_ as hard as a bricklayer's day, or a
+bank clerk's day, or an engine driver's day. And I believe that the
+various degrees of skill, necessary for doing any job really well, are
+not very different on the whole. Different, yes, but not very different.
+A General's job is difficult, but not _much_ more difficult than a
+nurse's job.
+
+And so I believe all jobs ought to be paid on a rather more equal
+footing. Not on an equal footing, but a _rather more equal_ footing
+than now.
+
+Do you agree?
+
+
+_December 6._
+
+Cathedrals, the earth, the sky, and all that in them is--those are the
+things that rest and soothe one out here. Thank God for cathedrals! How
+splendid of Litlin, to be getting Bunny taught reels. I do trust she
+will give lots of attention to it.
+
+After seeing a certain amount of human misery and so forth, I believe
+more than ever that the whole aim of the world is in the direction of
+Joy. And as dancing is one of the most primitive expressions of joy,
+give me dancing, says I.
+
+This is all said in the middle of dictation of orders, and so I expect
+it's ungrammatical, but you know what I mean.
+
+
+_December 7._
+
+What do you think? I lunched to-day with George. We lunched in a most
+superb officers' club, formerly the house of some Count or other: all
+white and gold, and chandeliers and mirrors--a dream.
+
+
+_December 8._
+
+[Sidenote: JEZEBEL ACCEPTS AN APOLOGY]
+
+Our move has been postponed twice now, and we don't go till Monday.
+
+But meanwhile I heard from Mark to-day. He is A.D.C. to the G.O.C., and
+apparently caught sight of Roger and me the other day, while flashing
+past in the G.O.C.'s car. So we are going to have a great meeting. It
+will be immense fun. Mark, Dennis and I were all tremendous
+friends--just the same type.
+
+Swallow is much better, and Jezebel says that, if she had known Swallow
+would bleed so much, she would have kicked him in a different place,
+where he wouldn't have bled so profusely. This, for Jezebel, is
+extremely gracious.
+
+Tank's only remark about being put between the two was: "Well, I'm
+always very glad to do what I'm told."
+
+Swallow is desperately sorry about the whole affair, and is on
+tenter-hooks lest Jezebel should never speak to him again. He says she
+really didn't mean to kick, and she can't understand how it is that he
+has so little control over himself. So all's well.
+
+
+_December 9._
+
+Hunt and Hale have made their very tumble-down barn a perfect model of
+neatness. They sleep within about 3 yards of the horses' heels. Hunt in
+particular never likes to be far away from "my 'osses," as he calls
+them. I have less and less say in the matter of the 'osses as time goes
+on! I merely say: "Hunt, I want a horse and an orderly at 8 a.m.
+to-morrow."
+
+It's useless for me to say I'd like Swallow or Tank or Jezebel, because,
+if I name one in particular, there's always some reason why it would be
+better not to ride that one that day. Oh, "she wants shoeing behind,"
+or, "she had one of her moods this morning, and so I exercised her very
+early," or "he didn't eat his corn, and had better stay in." So I just
+meekly ask for a horse. And a horse arrives.
+
+Swallow is still rather lame, but seems better now. And the gentle
+influence of Tank is, I really believe, soothing Jezebel. Tank is a very
+charming creature, and her perfect manners are a good example to the
+other two. But--what an awful admission!--she is so good that I own I
+find her rather dull. Poor little Tank!
+
+Jorrocks has gone off to a nasty place, I fear, with his troop. But all
+seems fairly quiet at present.
+
+
+_December 12._
+
+The trek is at an end.
+
+We have arrived at a place well behind the line, and not at all
+wrecked, except for holes here and there. But the river! Oh my aunt!
+It's marvellous. It winds in and out of low hills, and as I saw it this
+evening, from an eminence, it looked more snaky than ever. Huge great
+loops with the lovely pale sedges on either side. The almost yellow
+hills are dotted with junipers. I long to see it to-morrow morning.
+There's no doubt it's one of the most fascinating rivers I've seen.
+Hooded crows sailing over the uplands, and I met a flock of bright sweet
+goldfinches near some guns, and a tree-creeper in a copse.
+
+[Sidenote: SAILLY-LE-SEC]
+
+What a wonderful day! It was snowing all the time, with quite warm,
+sunny intervals. Swallow and Tank and Jezebel are all under cover, and
+I've actually got a bed! You might not call it a bed, but it is a bed,
+because it has four legs (one of them a biscuit tin). The place where we
+were going to has been rather too heavily strafed lately, so they are
+keeping us back here.
+
+Things are wonderfully quiet, and there are no batteries near us, which
+is pleasant. I did want to show you the beautiful river winding in and
+out of the little hills. The great river-bed is quite untouched by
+shells here, and the very sight of it would soothe the most jangled
+nerves. Oh, it did look so heavenly this evening. Thank God for this
+glorious river. The snow melted as it fell. The snow flakes as they
+touched the river were like fairies taking headers.
+
+
+_December 15._
+
+Isn't this fine about Peace?
+
+So Fritz would like Peace, would he? No amount of flamboyant talk can
+possibly hide the fact that he wants peace. And it isn't the victor who
+asks for peace first. Carry on, say we.
+
+
+_December 20._
+
+Have you had any of the letters in which I told you how the place we
+were to have been sent to was too continuously strafed? And how we were
+sent to this very quiet and unwrecked place? And how I've got a bed, and
+how happy the horses are?
+
+About the intelligence job. Things are hanging fire rather, as the Staff
+Major, who may ask for me to come away with him to another corps, is now
+attached to this corps. So what will be the end of it I don't know.
+
+Frankly, I am sore tempted for this reason, that I think I could do it
+rather well. Of course, each corps does things differently, but, judging
+from the way in which this corps likes the job done, I feel certain I
+could tackle it in another corps. That's boasting. But you understand
+so perfectly. It would be glorious to be doing something really well.
+
+[Sidenote: A STAFF JOB]
+
+I _can't_ be an ordinary soldier. Too absent-minded--hopelessly vague
+and careless. I live on tenter-hooks always. What detail have I
+forgotten? What order did I give that could be taken two ways?
+
+It's sad for Pat that his friends are gone. I feel so murky when mine
+go, that I understand what it must be for him. But friends or no
+friends, broken-hearted or whole, we must damned well carry on! And
+that's all about it.
+
+A perfect letter from old Norman to-day. He must be quite useless as a
+soldier, whereas at his own job he stands alone, with a wonderful future
+before him. Well, well! I meant not to grouse to you again. And here's a
+letter nearly full of it. But there, I made a stupid mistake to-day, and
+it's all so boring and beastly.
+
+Anyhow, we are fighting for civilization, and the Huns are, too, in a
+way. But our idea of civilization is better than the Huns' idea. So we
+gradually win.
+
+
+_December 21._
+
+I have at last made up my mind. I'm going to take on this job. How
+unwillingly I can hardly tell you. I wanted to be in the great Push
+next year so badly. Everyone, everything, is preparing for it. The
+cavalry will get through, and I shall be driving about behind in some
+gilded car, or watching from some very distant hill with Jezebel (who
+won't care a damn whether the cavalry get through or not).
+
+But I had two interviews with the Major and the General to-day. Coves
+like painters seem to be rather wanted, and--well, it's clear now. I
+must go.
+
+To-morrow or next week, perhaps, the extreme fascination of the job will
+obliterate a certain feeling of flatness, of disappointment, of ... of
+... of shirking. Yes, that's it: I feel as if I were shirking all the
+horrors. You see, I shall enjoy this job immensely. All the hateful
+"arrangering things" for large numbers of men, all the tiresome
+formalities, all the discomfort, all the future dangers, finished
+with--over. I don't say that we've had _long_ periods of danger or
+_much_ discomfort; but we've had quite enough to make a very ordinary
+mortal hope never to go through it again.
+
+But to think that I've deliberately chosen the easy path. Well, I don't
+care! I've chosen it. I meant to choose it. I'm glad I've chosen it.
+That is the one job in the whole war that I could do really well. How
+best to serve the country--that's the only question. So there you are.
+I've been and took the plunge, and I believe I'm right.
+
+First of all a week or two getting to know the ropes in _this_ corps,
+and then off with the Major and the General to another corps.
+
+My aunt! what an egoistical letter this is. However, to you no
+apologies.
+
+
+_December 22._
+
+[Sidenote: A DECISION]
+
+Letters have been lurching in, in threes and fours. But what matters it
+how they come? I always know that they are coming. And the future's
+where _my_ heart is always. So here's to the letters to come, and here's
+to our meeting again, and here's to Life--long, sweet, glorious Life.
+
+We shall see the Christmas roses of the Cotswolds together one day, and
+I think the war will have given them a mysterious loveliness that we
+never understood before. Every year they'll come up out of the ground
+again and surprise us. I shall be getting older and older--and so will
+you, too. And all our little plans will have a quiet, peaceful joy for
+us that wouldn't have been possible but for the war. Art will be like
+angels coming and going. Effort will be intensified. The lives of the
+poor must be happier, because everyone will be more ready to give and
+take.
+
+It won't come all at once. But there'll be a difference. The war will
+have made a difference. Thank God for the war!
+
+
+_December 25._
+
+[Sidenote: CHRISTMAS 1916]
+
+Never talk about the "idle" staff. Yesterday we were working absolutely
+solid without any break at all except an hour for lunch and an hour for
+dinner (tea? away frivolous thought!) from 9 a.m. till 11.30 p.m. Most
+interesting; but let's hope this first day's experience won't be a fair
+sample, or I shall simply melt down like a guttered candle. None of the
+Generals and people seemed to think it unusual. At least they never said
+so. Personally I found it quite kolossal.
+
+
+_12.30 a.m._
+
+Such a funny Christmas Day! I've been fixing on a large map all the gun
+positions on the corps front. There are a very great many, and the
+positions must be marked very exactly. I was quite nervous lest there
+should be a mistake. It has taken since about two o'clock till now. And
+I think it is accurate at last.
+
+At about 10 p.m. I found out an awful mistake. One of the heavies quite
+100 yards wrong, which might have meant that it would be ranging on the
+wrong place, and probably do no damage whatever. Desperate thought!
+
+Well, the staff is the most hard-working body of men I've ever seen.
+They don't appear ever to get any exercise. And, really, the work is all
+so vital that I don't see how they ever can expect to get any exercise.
+
+About leave. Possibly on the way up to the other corps a side-slip to
+Blighty will be allowed.
+
+Don't depend on anything. There seems to be a dearth of people who can
+do this work, and so it would be unwise to count on getting away. The
+thing is, however, conceivable--that is all.
+
+
+_December 27._
+
+First of all about current affairs here.
+
+Captain G---- is probably going to Army, so it is suggested that I shall
+take his place here. He runs all the plotting of the aeroplane
+photographs, etc., for the corps. It's a most awful and alarming
+responsibility, and I don't feel that I can do it yet. May he not get
+taken away just for a little while, or I'm lost.
+
+The corps commander sends for him (he has been doing the job for nine
+months), and says: "Now, where is our line at the present moment? Has
+so-and-so trench been repaired, and where is so-and-so German battery
+that was shelling the ---- Brigade yesterday?" Well, of course I simply
+couldn't answer these questions yet.
+
+The prospect is murky. Given a little time, I think I could do it; but
+... well, one can but try.
+
+I asked the Captain if he thought leave at all possible. He most
+strongly advised me not to dream of asking. The corps is certain to
+refuse in any case, as they will want me to sweat up the show and get to
+know all about it as rapidly as possible.
+
+
+_January 2, 1917._
+
+I think I shall be going to live with the R.F.C., so as to be able to
+snatch their photographs the instant they come in--puzzle them out--put
+them quickly on to a map--and send them off. Everyone then will know far
+more quickly what Fritz is up to.
+
+So don't be surprised if letters are addressed from R.F.C. shortly. I
+shall take a couple of draughtsmen and a clerk and an orderly, and Hale.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE BUTTE DE WARLENCOURT
+This small chalk mound was one of the most difficult obstacles on the
+way to BAPAUME. In the foreground a large 'crump-hole' and the
+remains of a little copse.]
+
+
+_January 11._
+
+[Sidenote: AEROPLANE PHOTOGRAPHS]
+
+I don't know when leave will be possible. This job is rather in the
+making, and is really very important stuff. A great responsibility,
+says the corps commander. In fact, I am just a bit nervous about
+things generally. That battery that was reported in so-and-so wood. Is
+it there still? Well, where has it moved to, then? You are not sure? Why
+not? No recent photographs of it? But why not? Can it be in so-and-so
+quarry, perhaps? That light railway has been repeatedly smashed up by
+our heavies. Repaired? What? What evidence have you? Let me have a map
+as soon as possible, showing exactly where you believe that line has
+been repaired, and the exact position of that battery in the quarry--if
+it really is there. But don't tell me it's in the quarry unless you are
+quite sure. Yes, sir. And you'd better have the map duplicated. How many
+can the draughtsmen print before to-morrow? About 300. Well, send out
+copies. I must have that battery silenced at once. Do you see? Can I
+rely on it being sent out in time? Yes, sir.
+
+That's the sort of thing. Things that _must_ be done and quickly.
+Perhaps it sounds nothing much--a mere bit of a map. But maps are like
+lamps to men in the dark. And they must be accurate. To me, therefore,
+the most inaccurate, absent-minded mortal before the war that ever
+breathed, it is all a source of great anxiety.
+
+
+_January 12._
+
+I've got a bedroom with a brick floor in a cottage. I really hardly know
+what it's like, as I arrive there about twelve o'clock every night and
+fall into bed, and then up again at 7.30 next morning as a rule, and
+frowsy at that. The roads here are just as muddy as ever, and if you go
+off the roads you go too deep. We are camouflaging the whole place, and
+I think it will soon be very difficult for the Huns to see it. At least,
+when I say "we" are camouflaging, I mean that I run out for two minutes
+about every three hours, and give hurried directions to a few bewildered
+men, and rush in again. I'm sure they think the extraordinary patterns
+that I order them to paint all over the huts, etc., are quite mad. The
+R.F.C. show isn't ready yet, but it's likely to be so shortly.
+
+
+_January 17._
+
+To-day's letter got me into an absurd fit of internal laughter. Hale
+brought it in while I was poring over some new photographs of Boche
+emplacements, or dug-outs, or something--poring with a magnifying
+glass.... And then came your drawings of the rooms at the cottage.
+
+That'll be admirable. I tried to hold my head and think of exactly how
+the cottage looked, and where the new rooms were to be; but somehow I've
+got no brains left. And I leave it all to you. One day we shall be able
+to discuss it peaceably, but at present this brain is like some limp
+jellyfish floating in the sea.
+
+To-day I'm doing a map, and the draughtsmen are copying it, of some
+Boche dug-outs. Ye gods! what do I care about dug-outs! As well make
+maps of all the rabbit-holes in Glamorganshire. But there, what's the
+good of talking like that. It's got to be done.
+
+
+_January 24._
+
+[Sidenote: BUSY DAYS]
+
+The aeroplanes have brought in the most marvellous photographs, and I am
+very busy deciphering them and mapping the information on to a map.
+
+
+_February 8._
+
+After many, many days of incessant work comes a brief interval of
+repose--till to-morrow morning.
+
+We moved up here yesterday afternoon late.
+
+Well, imagine a lovely large hut.
+
+The room on the left is where all the maps, etc., are made, and the
+room on the right is my office.
+
+But outsiders can't just barge into my office. Oh no! They must ask one
+of the orderlies if they can see me. Isn't it ridiculous!
+
+Then there is a tiny bedroom.
+
+The office walls are entirely covered now with aeroplane photos and
+maps. It is all rather fun, and I think it won't be quite such a strain.
+The cold is intense. Hale is functioning with the stove in my room at
+the moment. I have said once that I don't really need a fire in my
+bedroom; but he evidently has different views, and is firmly lighting
+it. He is quite happy here.
+
+I'm having the hut papered, to make it warmer. And canvas curtains, if
+you please!
+
+The R.F.C. people are most hospitable and nice. I like them very much.
+It's all quite interesting, and the aeroplanes are delicious as they
+move, buzzing like vast mosquitoes.
+
+I go down in a side-car every day (that's the programme) to corps H.Q.
+to report and get instructions.
+
+
+_February 12._
+
+Something may happen to prevent leave before leave comes. You will
+understand. I should have to "remain at my post," as novels say.
+
+
+_February 15._
+
+[Sidenote: WITH THE R.F.C.]
+
+A very difficult map has just been finished, and is being printed, and
+here we sit down for a little talk together. The war is for the moment
+far away. Away anxiety, away nervous apprehension, away fatigue, away
+responsibility, away Wilhelm! Let the doors be shut, the curtains drawn.
+Listen. An adventure, amusing, and rather exciting. Would you like to
+hear about it? Well, I was making a raised map of a particular part of
+the line for the corps commander. And I go up from time to time to scan
+the ground, so that it may be very accurate and therefore rather useful.
+At least that is what I hope. Yesterday, then, up into the blue, piloted
+by Eric.
+
+It was not a good day. In fact, too dud for good observation. But the
+relief map must be ready quickly.
+
+Imagine us, please, robed in leather coats and leather helmets and
+gauntlets, and with goggles, waiting at the entrance of a hangar while
+the mechanics bring out the gadfly. They have already looked the
+creature over with great care. The pale yellow wings glitter against the
+violet horizon. The sun is shining, but it's freezing hard. Eric climbs
+in, and then I do. I sit behind with the machine gun.
+
+I clasp a sketchbook, to sketch the lie of the land. O my aunt in
+Jericho! isn't it Arctic! Fingers that feel like ammoniated quinine. You
+know, a faint unpleasant tingle.
+
+They are starting the engines. Difficult this cold weather. The
+following strange colloquy ensues:
+
+    _Mechanic:_ "Contact."
+    _Pilot:_ "Contact."
+    _M._ "Switch off."
+    _P._ "Switch off."
+    _M._ "Contact."
+    _P._ "Contact."
+    _M._ "Switch off."
+    _P._ "Suck in."
+    _M._ "Contact."
+    _P._ "Contact."
+
+And with a terrific whir the propeller flashes round. The sound
+increases, and then decreases slightly, and increases again. The gadfly
+moves. Moves more rapidly. Skims along the ground. Rises, rises, rises.
+Ah, the beautiful river! Every time I have flown the beauty of that
+river catches me in the throat. But this featureless waste. Bereft of
+everything but earth, and a few low shelters and gun-pits, and seamed
+with trenches. Hideously lonely.
+
+Well, anyhow, here we are sailing high above it all, the wind
+occasionally lifting one of the wings, and then the other, like a
+sea-gull's. There is a haze, and it's not easy to see. You peer over the
+edge, and behold at last the desired wood.
+
+[Sidenote: A SCRAP IN THE AIR]
+
+A wood? That? Good heavens! That poor miserable mess of splinters and
+gashed soil? Each time I see one of the woods destroyed by this war I
+thank God that our glorious Cotswold woods are still untouched.
+Primroses, wood-anemones, squirrels. To think of squirrels!... Not
+another aeroplane in sight. Neither our own nor Hun machines. Eric
+circles smoothly round above the wood, and then crosses back over
+no-man's-land to fly low, so that I can see the wood obliquely. Archie
+quite wide of his mark. This doubling and circling perplexes him. The
+sketch progresses. I look round from time to time to see that there are
+still no Huns about. Eric also looks about. No: nothing in sight. The
+guns are pooping off, but the noise of the engines makes the guns sound
+like tiny little "pops." There, now I've nearly done. Lucky I came,
+because the wood isn't quite what we thought. Yes, that'll do.... We are
+up at a considerable height....
+
+Suddenly Rat-tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat! above our heads. Three
+Hun aeroplanes right on top of us; Eric drives headlong in a spiral
+curve at full speed, smoke trailing out behind. The gun! I fumble.
+Can't get round to it. Damn!
+
+Rat-tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat! go the Huns. But Eric is faster. Are
+they all Huns, though? Shall I fire? Yes. No. They daren't come down low
+over our lines. We are safe. Yes, look, they were all Huns. They hang
+about far up aloft. The Hun usually hunts in threes. Why, oh why, didn't
+I fire? Well, it can't be helped now. Eric looks round. We both laugh.
+"Why didn't you fire?" he shouts. I can't hear what he says, but I know
+from the shape of his mouth that's what he is saying. I just smile and
+shake my head. Can't explain now.
+
+Where on earth did they come from? Coasting about very high up, I
+suppose, and suddenly swooped down at us.
+
+However, the drawing is done. So that's that. Home, John!
+
+One little bullet-hole through one of the wings, no more. Indifferent
+shooting, my friend Fritz. However, I can't talk, because I never fired
+at all!
+
+
+_February 16._
+
+I've never thanked you for the chocolates which arrived two days ago.
+But they arrived during one of the avalanches of work, and were all
+eaten within half an hour or so; not by me, but by various R.F.C. men
+who are always coming in and out of my office for "the latest."
+
+[Sidenote: TOLL OF WAR]
+
+To-day all frosty and sunny. Think of going on to the terrace at home
+before breakfast and seeing some jolly little new flower out, with the
+Golden Valley behind, all grey-blue and woody.
+
+It's all working well here, and, being the representative of the corps,
+I have a certain status which is pleasant. They think that I may or may
+not give them a good character to the Powers that be. Quite fun.
+
+They are awfully nice fellows. The only two I knew before were Eric and
+Bill Vivian. Bill I have known for a very long time, and during the war
+I've seen a great deal of him, and was very fond of him. He was brought
+down by Archie yesterday in our lines. Burnt to death. Dead when they
+reached him. Yesterday night at mess we were all quite gay. Only one man
+showed that his heart was as heavy as lead. And it seemed bad form.
+Heaviness of heart is bad form. No gentleman should have a heavy heart.
+A sign of weakness, of ill breeding.
+
+
+_February 17._
+
+To-day has been one of the jumpy, anxious days again, because something
+is to happen shortly, and those concerned are ringing up all the time
+asking me this and that about the Boche trenches, etc. And they want
+maps of this and plans of that and t'other. It's these times before some
+event that are so wearing. The smaller the event, the more wearing very
+often, because it's just some one or two officers, perhaps, who are
+doing the show, and, of course, half their success or failure depends on
+whether an unhappy intelligence officer can tell them exactly what they
+are up against, and exactly where it is and so on. I always go on the
+principle of assuming the worst. If I think there _may_ be a minny to
+meet them, I tell them there _is_ a minny, and probably two. It may not
+be very cheering to them. But if the minny is there, well, then I've put
+them on their guard; and if it isn't there, well, they can laugh at the
+work of the staff, and there's no harm done. People don't realize the
+awful strain and responsibility and hard work of staffs. It's sometimes
+a nightmare. Think of it in this way: I make a slip. A dozen men get
+killed. When the Push comes, I make another slip, and a hundred men get
+killed. Perhaps more. All the work of the lazy and incompetent staff!
+But if the staffs are lazy and incompetent, then, for goodness' sake,
+let's put more energetic and more competent people in their places. But
+where are these more competent people? In the divisions? in the
+battalions? But that is exactly where the present staffs came from! And
+they are the very people who originally jibed at the staffs! Well,
+anyhow, the war will end some day.
+
+
+_February 21._
+
+[Sidenote: THE WILD DUCK]
+
+_Re_ America. It doesn't look much as if they were coming in now, does
+it? However, one of the Scots Guards gave me June as the end of the war.
+He offered me 10 to 1 in francs; but, as I am always rather muddled as
+to whether that means that he gives me 10 francs if I win, or I give him
+1 franc if I lose, or what, I declined to bet. I expect he thinks I
+don't bet on principle. But, anyway, let's hope he wins.
+
+Leave is off at present.
+
+The worst of this game is that now I feel I want to do it all myself. I
+really do know a fair amount about the Boche lines, and I long to spend
+a day wandering about there taking notes!
+
+I was up yesterday afternoon trying to find out a certain T.M. battery,
+and what should fly by quite close and quite unconcerned but a duck! We
+were not very high, and it was very misty. The duck just appeared, with
+his neck stretched out, eager and oblivious. And then vanished into the
+mist again. I was thinking about that duck too much to find out what I
+wanted. Anyway, it was a fruitless journey. But flying amongst clouds is
+very beautiful. Sometimes we got above the clouds, to where the sun was
+functioning away as efficiently as ever. The clouds looked like millions
+of feather beds.
+
+
+_March 2._
+
+I have been doing some drawings of R.F.C. officers. They love being
+"took" out here, and my office is rapidly degenerating into a club,
+which makes work no easier.
+
+Well, you see from the papers what is happening. The Boche retires to
+the Hindenburg Line, and we follow.
+
+I should so love to tell you all about it, but Mum's the word. A great
+moral defeat for poor Fritz, anyway.
+
+The cavalry are sharpening their swords.
+
+The aeroplanes sail high up in the blue, like hungry hawks.
+
+
+_March 5._
+
+I am probably going off to-morrow. Now, where do you think? Paris?
+Madrid? Anything of that sort?
+
+Wrong again. Shall I tell you?
+
+VICTORIA.
+
+I'll send you a telegram directly I get across the briny.
+
+And I plead for no "back from the war tea-parties," please!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+[Illustration: PERONNE
+From BIACHES
+A few days after the evacuation. From a distance the place looked almost
+intact, as some of the outside walls had been left standing. That white
+building in the centre of the town was once the cathedral. MONT ST.
+QUENTIN on the left. The thin white lines on the slopes beyond are
+trenches.]
+
+
+_March 22._
+
+[Sidenote: THE HUN RETREAT]
+
+The Hun rearguards are now well beyond ----. I knew the place so
+intimately from photographs, and from high up in the air, that a view of
+it from terra-firma promised to be quite interesting.
+
+So with great eagerness, some sandwiches, and the faithful sketchbook, I
+sallied forth. Harry came, too. A glorious day of brilliant sun and
+brief snowstorms.
+
+From the aerodrome through all this devastated country, past wrecked
+villages, orchards laid waste, dug-out camps, bivouac camps, R.E. dumps,
+light railways, battered trollies lying on their sides, and all the ugly
+confusion of old wire rusted a red-hot colour, bits of corrugated iron,
+bits of netting screens, more wire, dead horses, dead men in all stages
+of decomposition, legs, hands, heads scattered anywhere, dead trees,
+mud, broken rifles, gas-bags, tin helmets, bully-beef tins, derelict
+trenches, derelict telephone wires, grenades, aerial torpedoes, all the
+toys of war, broken and useless. Tommy, the dear hairies, and the R.E.
+dumps, to remind you what vast stores of everything are still being
+accumulated.
+
+The ground becomes more and more like boiling porridge as you approach
+no-man's-land. Of no-man's-land itself, perhaps, the less said the
+better. No-beast's-land--call it that rather. And yet men have been very
+brave, very tender, in no-man's-land. Next we come to those Hun trenches
+that I have peered at from a distance so long and mapped so often. It
+all seems rather futile now.
+
+Past the support trenches. Past the second line. Damn it! how much
+larger and deeper that old emplacement is than I thought! The country is
+less pitted, too. Of course, it hasn't been fought over like our back
+areas. Why; here are trees scarcely knocked about at all. A recognizable
+field there. How real that stream looks! And, oh Jemima! a blue tit.
+
+A little distance farther. Over that gentle rise, and there behold ----.
+Surely one of the loveliest towns in France, on its low hill surrounded
+by the quiet waters of the Somme. From a distance it looks all right;
+though somehow, the smoke still ascending from it doesn't look natural.
+
+As you approach you realize that what looks so charming is just
+empty, shelled, charred, and broken. The Huns have destroyed every
+single house, all the bridges, and the cathedral, too. The cathedral
+that once crowned the town now stands a pale crushed ghost in the
+deserted market-place.
+
+[Sidenote: PERONNE]
+
+Some of the streets are almost amusing. Imagine Rye with the pretty
+alleys so encumbered and piled up with roofs, sofas, the contents of
+wardrobes, dormer-windows, smashed mirrors, rubble, and dust, that it's
+quite impossible to proceed. Very well, that's ----.
+
+Go into the houses, and there it's just as it is in the streets.
+Everything crushed to atoms. Images of saints have been hurled out on to
+garbage-heaps, and in the cathedral huge pillars are lying about in
+clumsy confusion amongst chairs, organ pipes, and gilded flowers.
+
+On a huge notice board in the Grande Place the Hun has written:
+
+     NICHT ARGERN: NUR WUNDERN!
+
+(Don't argue: only wonder! We the Huns did this. Why discuss what we
+have done? We have destroyed your city. Gape and stare, stupid fools!
+What does it matter to us? We took your precious town from you, because
+we wanted it. Now we don't want it any more. Here it is back again.
+With our love.) Some merry soldier wrote that up, I suppose. It was a
+pity.
+
+There were French officers in ---- to-day. I spoke to one. He answered
+with a quiet, simple bitterness and determination that would have turned
+even a Hohenzollern pale, I think. Unhappy Emperor! he must be feeling
+decidedly uneasy nowadays.
+
+Another odd sight was a tub full of water, with a little dog trying to
+get out. But the little dog was dead. A crump evidently landed somewhere
+near, and just petrified him, as it were. You often see men like that,
+struck dead in the middle of some act. Men are usually turned a dull
+purplish or greenish black. So was this little dog. We ate a delicious
+lunch on the battlements, our legs dangling 50 feet above the reedy
+water. Lots of moorhen and coot swimming about.
+
+The sun was warm. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. What a heavenly world
+it is!
+
+
+_April 6._
+
+After a hectic day comes this chance of writing to you. Eleven-thirty
+p.m.
+
+Would you like to hear about night flying? I didn't go, but I sketched
+the others going. And these are some notes. A bombing raid. It had been
+ordered in the morning. A raid on ----. After a cheery dinner we trooped
+out, singing foolish songs. The hangars a few hundred yards away across
+the mud. They looked huge and eerie, looming up from the dark ground,
+all stately in the moonlight. The moon had a halo, but was very bright,
+bright enough to sketch by.
+
+[Sidenote: NIGHT FLYING]
+
+Six flares were flickering at intervals round the aerodrome. A vivid
+orange colour against the dim blue sky. The horizon was greyer, and
+little flames flashed intermittently from it. There were the aeroplanes
+waiting.
+
+It was very cold. Soon the mechanics were starting the machines. The
+usual loud spurting and fizzing till presently the first machine begins
+to move. A big semi-luminous beetle lurching forward; then faster and
+faster and away, lifting up, up, up into the night. Only the lights
+visible now, but you can hear the hum of the engines a long way off.
+Other machines follow. The sky is full of twinkling fairies. They circle
+about for a bit, and then all head towards the east. Gradually the
+humming dies away in the distance. Look out for yourselves, you sleeping
+Huns!
+
+A long while afterwards the humming again.
+
+The first aeroplane is coming home. There he is. Gradually lower and
+nearer. The machine descends smoothly on to the ground, turns and
+"taxis," spitting angrily towards the hangar where it lives. Muffled
+figures get out, and the mechanics take in the machine tail first to its
+home. What? oh yes, quite successful. Smashed the place to blazes.
+Anyone got a cigarette? Other machines begin coming in. It's such a
+clear night that we still stand about in groups waiting for the last one
+to arrive. Damn it all! where can old Rupert have got to? We'll just
+wait till he comes back, and then bundle off to bed. Anxious? Good Lord,
+no! What about?
+
+Suddenly a small sharp flash high up in the night. Another and another.
+The Huns! They are coming. Archie is shelling them. Now another Archie
+poops off nearer here. Quick! Where's the orderly officer?
+
+In a couple of minutes all is dark. Gradually the drone of the Huns,
+high up in the air, becomes audible. No. They seem to be steering more
+towards ----. Searchlights from three different directions grope slowly
+to and fro. Where the devil are the Huns? The searchlights cannot find
+them. They must be cruising somewhere up above those thin cirrus clouds.
+Are they going to drop bombs on us? No, their direction is too far
+south. The searchlights cannot find them.
+
+[Sidenote: THE END]
+
+No sign of Rupert yet. Probably he has landed at another aerodrome. Dear
+old Rupert. One of the very best in this world. He'll be all right. Come
+on. It's too cold. Let's turn in.
+
+
+
+
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+Pocket Volumes, in the St. Martin's Library, pott 8vo., cloth, 2s. net
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+VOLUME ONE
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+Transcriber's Note: The following probable typos have been left as
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Letters to Helen, by Keith Henderson
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