Part 8

Yours with much love, Con.

XVIII

October 13th, 1916.

DEAR ONES:

I have only time to write and assure you that I am safe. We're living in trenches at present--I have my sleeping bag placed on a stretcher to keep it fairly dry. By the time you get this we expect to be having a rest, as we've been hard at it now for an unusually long time. How I wish that I could tell you so many things that are big and vivid in my mind-but the censor--!

Yesterday I had an exciting day. I was up forward when word came through that an officer still further forward was wounded and he'd been caught in a heavy enemy fire. I had only a kid telephonist with me, but we found a stretcher, went forward and got him out. The earth was hopping up and down like pop-corn in a frying pan. The unfortunate thing was that the poor chap died on the way out. It was only the evening before that we had dined together and he had told me what he was going to do with his next leave.

God bless you all, CON.

XIX

October 14th, 1916.

DEAREST MOTHER:

I'm still all right and well. To-day I had the funniest experience of my life--got caught in a Hun curtain of fire and had to lie on my tummy for two hours in a trench with the shells bursting five yards from me--and never a scratch. You know how I used to wonder what I'd do under such circumstances. Well, I laughed. All I could think of was the sleek people walking down Fifth Avenue, and the equally sleek crowds taking tea at the Waldorf. It struck me as ludicrous that I, who had been one of them, should be lying there lunchless. For a little while I was slightly deaf with the concussions.

That poem keeps on going through my head,

Oh, to come home once more, when the dusk is falling, To see the nursery lighted and the children's table spread; "Mother, mother, mother!" the eager voices calling, "The baby was so sleepy that he had to go to bed!"

Wouldn't it be good, instead of sitting in a Hun dug-out?

Yours lovingly, CON.

October 15th, 1916.

Dear Ones:

We're still in action, but are in hopes that soon we may be moved to winter quarters. We've had our taste of mud, and are anxious to move into better quarters before we get our next. I think I told you that our O.C. had got wounded in the feet, and our right section commander got it in the shoulder a little earlier--so we're a bit short-handed and find ourselves with plenty of work.

I have curiously lucid moments when recent happenings focus themselves in what seems to be their true perspective. The other night I was Forward Observation officer on one of our recent battlefields. I had to watch the front all night for signals, etc. There was a full white moon sailing serenely overhead, and when I looked at it I could almost fancy myself back in the old melancholy pomp of autumn woodlands where the leaves were red, not with the colour of men's blood. My mind went back to so many by-gone days-especially to three years ago. I seemed so vastly young then, upon reflection. For a little while I was full of regrets for many things wasted, and then I looked at the battlefield with its scattered kits and broken rifles. Nothing seemed to matter very much. A rat came out-then other rats. I stood there feeling extraordinarily aloof from all things that can hurt, and--you'll smile--I planned a novel. O, if I get back, how differently I shall write! When you've faced the worst in so many forms, you lose your fear and arrive at peace. There's a marvellous grandeur about all this carnage and desolation--men's souls rise above the distress--they have to in order to survive. When you see how cheap men's bodies are you cannot help but know that the body is the least part of personality.

You can let up on your nervousness when you get this, for I shall almost certainly be in a safer zone. We've done more than our share and must be withdrawn soon. There's hardly a battery which does not deserve a dozen D.S.O.'s with a V.C. or two thrown in.

It's 4.30 now--you'll be in church and, I hope, wearing my flowers. Wait till I come back and you shall go to church with the biggest bunch of roses that ever were pinned to a feminine chest. I wonder when that will be.

We have heaps of humour out here. You should have seen me this morning, sitting on the gun-seat while my batman cut my hair. A sand-bag was spread over my shoulders in place of a towel and the gun-detachment stood round and gave advice. I don't know what I look like, for I haven't dared to gaze into my shaving mirror.

Good luck to us all, CON

XXI

October 18th, 1910

Dearest M.:

I've come down to the lines to-day; to-morrow I go back again. I'm sitting alone in a deep chalk dug-out--it is 10 p.m. and I have lit a fire by splitting wood with a bayonet. Your letters from Montreal reached me yesterday. They came up in the water-cart when we'd all begun to despair of mail. It was wonderful the silence that followed while every one went back home for a little while, and most of them met their best girls. We've fallen into the habit of singing in parts. Jerusalem the Golden is a great favourite as we wait for our breakfast--we go through all our favourite songs, including Poor Old Adam Was My Father. Our greatest favourite is one which is symbolising the hopes that are in so many hearts on this greatest battlefield in history. We sing it under shell-fire as a kind of prayer, we sing it as we struggle knee-deep in the appalling mud, we sing it as we sit by a candle in our deep captured German dug-outs. It runs like this:

"There's a long, long trail a-winding Into the land of my dreams, Where the nightingales are singing And a white moon beams: