XLVIII
France June 1, 1918
As per usual when I write to you, I have my nose up against a solitary candle, am hedged in by shadows, and have the stump of a cigarette in my mouth. For days I have been waiting for letters from home, but none has arrived as yet. Either the ship has gone down or some other calamity has happened. I now promise myself that to-morrow there will be a huge package of belated mail for me.
We're travelling very light at present. The first thing I did on my return was to cut down my kit to the barest necessities and send all the balance back to England. It's better to have it safe in London, if out of immediate reach, than to have to abandon it in a ditch or shell-hole. While the summer lasts there are a great number of things that one can do without.
What an unsportsmanly crowd the Germans are! I think more than anything else it will be their lack of fair play that we shall hold against them when war is ended. Yesterday at the Pope's request we were foolish enough to refrain from bombing Cologne, so the Hun took the opportunity to both bomb and shell the Catholics of Paris. It makes one itch to grab a bayonet and go over the top to do him as much damage as opportunity will allow. The Hun is educating us out of our good-humoured contempt into a very deep-seated hatred of him. The other day I was in a forward town recently evacuated by its population. You walked through silent, torn streets, the windows all broken by shells, the doors sagging from their hinges and open. You peered across the thresholds into the houses. In many cases meals were still on the tables, partly eaten and hastily left. A stray cat scurried out into the yard; nothing else stirred. Over the entire death-like silence the summer sun shone down and far away a cuckoo was calling. One gets accustomed to the outward symbols of such tragedies—the broken homes, abandoned security and foregone happiness. The people themselves get used to it. To-day I met a farm-wagon piled high with the household gods, while a peasant woman walked beside with her best hat carried in a paper-bag in her hand. That was very typical—in all the ruin that had befallen a home to still cling to the best hat.
I'm very happy and well, living almost entirely in the open and in the saddle a good part of the day. The part of France I have lived in since my return is by far the cleanest and most beautiful that I have seen on active service. The weather has been golden and glorious. There is none of that fear in our hearts that you must experience for us. We're as certain of victory as we were during the days of the big Vimy advance.
The Army is a nursery organization, full of annoying pomposities and amusing class distinctions. Just at present we're being pestered with continual inspections, when each battery tries to invent some new trick for making itself look smarter. Soldiers, on such occasions, are like a lot of old women at a spring cleaning. The men much prefer killing Boches to being inspected. Burnishing steel, chasing all over the country to buy Brasso, spending fortunes on polish for the harness all seem such a fruitless waste of time when the Huns are hammering our line. But, of course, cleanliness has a moral effect on men who have been long under shell-fire.
This is a discursive sort of letter, and doesn't contain much real news. It's just for remembrance.