XLIV
France May 7, 1918
I am sitting in my bed—my sleeping-sack, I mean—which is spread out on the red-tiled floor of a funny little cottage. There isn't much of the floor left, as four of the other officers are sharing the room with me. Coming in through the window is the smell of sweet myrtle, old-fashioned and quiet; from far away drifts in the continual pounding of the guns and, strangely muddled up with the gunfire, the multitudinous croaking of frogs. I'm having an extraordinary May month of it in lovely country, marching through the showers, getting drenched and drying when the sun deigns to make an appearance. After being off a horse for so long, I'm in the saddle for many hours every day.
I am glad that you all feel the way you do about my returning to the Front. I was sure you wouldn't want me to be out of these great happenings. My fear, when I was in England this spring, was the same as I had when I first joined—that fighting would all-be ended before I got into the line. No fear of that; I think we're in for another two years of it. There's hot work ahead—the hottest of the entire war. Oddly enough my spirits rise as the struggle promises to grow fiercer. I don't know why, unless it is that as the action quickens one has a chance of giving more. There's nothing sad about being wounded or dying for one's country. In this war one does so much more than that—he dies for the whole of humanity.
Outside my window a stretch of hedges runs down to a little brook. Ducks, geese, cocks and hens make farmyard noises from dawn till last thing at night. Above all the peace and quiet, the distant guns keep up their incessant murmur. What a variety of places are likely to shelter me before the summer is ended—woods, ditches, open fields, trenches. It's all in the game and is romance of a sort. I'm sunburnt and hard. I feel tremendously alive.
Once again all the striving and ambition of literary success has vanished. I'm only a subaltern—and far prouder to be that than a writer. I'm estimated by none but my soldiering qualities and power to show guts. We were lawyers, engineers, business-men—now we're soldiers and inquire nothing of each other's past.
A thrush has started singing; he's in the willows that stand by the brookside. The planes go purring overhead, but he doesn't care. He goes on singing towards the evening sun as though his heart knew nothing but joy. He will be here singing long after we have passed upon our way.
Don't get worrying about my safety. You're sure to be feeling nervous at the wrong times, when I'm perfectly safe. Just feel glad that I'm allowed to be here, and don't look ahead.