Between writing this I've been making out the lines for the guns and running out to fire them—so forgive anything that is disjointed.
LXV
France July 29, 1918
I have just had a very large batch of letters to read. I feel simply overwhelmed with people's affection. I have to spend every moment of my leisure keeping up with my mighty correspondence. The mail very rarely brings me a bag which is totally empty. The American Red Cross in Paris keeps me in mind continually. I had thirty gramophone records and twelve razors from them the other day, together with a pressing invitation to get a French leave and spend it in Paris. But your letters bulk much larger in numbers than any that I receive from anywhere else. I always leave home-letters to the last—bread and butter first, cake last, is my rule.
I must apologize for the slackness of my correspondence for the past few days, but two of them were spent forward while taking part in a raid, and the third at the observing post. It rained pretty nearly all the time and sleep was not plentiful. Yesterday I spent in “pounding my ear” for hours; to-day I'm as fresh as a daisy and writing reams to you to make up for lost time.
You'll be sorry to hear that a favourite little chap of mine has been seriously wounded and may be dead by now. A year ago, at the Vimy show, he did yeoman service, and I got him recommended for the Military Medal. He was my runner on the famous day. He's been in all sorts of attacks for over three years, and at last a stray shell got him. It burst about ten feet away, wounding him in the head, arm, and knee, besides nearly cutting off a great toe. His name was Joy. He lived up to his name, and was carried out on the stretcher grim, but bravely smiling. You can't dodge your fate; it searches you out. You wonder—not fearfully, but curiously—whose turn it will be next. For yourself you don't much care; your regrets are for the others who are left. Still, don't you think that I'm going west, I have an instinct that I shall last to the end.
I think I mentioned the pathetic note of the mess cook, which I found awaiting me one morning on the breakfast table: “I kan't cock without stuf to cock with.” The history of our experiments in cooks would make a novel in itself. The man before the pathetic beggar was a miner in peace times; as a cook his meals were like charges of dynamite—they blasted our insides. The worst of them was that they were so deceptive, they looked innocent enough till it was too late to refuse them. You may lay it down as final that all cooks are the dirtiest men in any unit. The gentleman who couldn't “cock” earned for himself the title of the “World's Champion Long Distance Dirt Accumulator.” I was present when the O.C. discharged him. He sent for the man, and was stooping forward, doing up his boot, when he entered. The man looked like the wrath of God—as though he had been embracing all the denizens of Hell. Without looking up the O.C. commenced, “Where did you learn to prepare all these tasty meals you've been serving us?”
“I kan't cock without——”
“I know you can't cock,” said the O.C. tartly; “you can't even keep yourself clean. All you know how to do is to waste good food. I'm sending you down to the wagon-lines, and if you're not washed by guard-mounting, I've given orders to have you thrown into the horse-trough.”
Exit the “cock.”