September 1, 1918
This is just another little note to let you know that I am safe and well. I am allowed to say so little to you; that's one of the worst penalties of this war—the silence. Yesterday your cable, sent in reply to mine and forwarded from London, arrived. My only chance of relieving your suspense when I have not been able to write for some time, is to get one of my English friends to cable to you.
Did you see the good news concerning R. B.? He's got his V.C. for saving life under shell-fire in Zeebrugge harbour. His M.L. was hit fifty times. I remember the way his neighbours used to patronize him before the war. They all laughed when he went to California to study for an aeroplane pilot. They didn't try to join themselves, but his keenness struck them as funny. What could a man who was half-blind do at the war, they asked—a man who ran his launch into logs on the lake, and who crashed in full daylight when approaching a wharf? When he had been awarded his flying certificate at the American Air School our R.F.C. refused to take him. He tried to get into the infantry, into everything, anything, and was universally turned down on the score of weak sight. His quixotic keenness made less keen spectators smile. Then, by a careless chance, he got himself accepted by the R.N.V.R. and was put on to a motor launch. Everyone pictured him as colliding with everything solid that came his way, and marvelled at the slipshod naval tests. But it wasn't his eyesight and limitations that really counted—it was his keenness. In two years he's a V.C., a D.S.O., and a Lieutenant-Commander. Before the war he was the kind of chap with whom girls danced out of kindness To-day he's a hero.
We were discussing him out here the other day; he's the type of hero this war has produced—a man not strong physically, a man self-depreciating and shy, a man with grave limitations and very conscious of his difference from other men. This was his chance to approve himself. People laughed that he should offer himself as a fighter at all, but he elbowed his way through their laughter to self-conquest. That's the grand side of war—its test of internals, of the heart and spirit of a man! bone and muscle and charm are only secondary.
The big things one sees done out here—done in the way of duty—and so quietly! Whether one comes back or stays, the test has made all the personal suffering worth while—for one hour of living to know that you have played the man and saved a fellow-creature's life. One never knows when these chances will come; they rush in on you unexpectedly and expect to find you ready. In the encounter the character built up in a lifetime is examined and reported on by the momentary result.
And yet how one suffers for the suffering he witnesses—the suffering of horses and Huns, as well as of the men on our own side. The silent, smashed forms carried past on the stretchers; the little groups of busy men among whom a shell bursts, leaving those who do not rise. And overhead the sky is blue and the wind blows happily through the sunshine. “Gone west”—that's all, to the land of departing suns. Some of us will stay to sleep among the gentlemen of France. In either event we are fortunate in having been given the privilege to serve our kind.
LXXVI
Prince of Wales Hospital, London, September 6, 1918
Here I am once again in a clean white bed with the discreet feet of nurses, like those of nuns, making hardly any sound as they pass up and down the corridor. There's just one other officer in my room. His leg is full of machine-gun bullets, and, like myself, he's just arrived from France. I've not got used to this new security yet, this right to live, this ordered decency—all of which seems to be summed up in the presence of women. Less than three days ago I saw two of my gun-teams scuppered by shellfire and the horses rolling among the wounded men. I can't get the sight out of my mind. To be alive seems an unfair advantage I have taken.—And all the time I want to be back in the thick of it. It was so glorious—such a bon little war, as we say out there, while it lasted.
You'll want to know what happened. On 2nd September at dawn we set out as the point of the attacking wedge to hammer our way to Cambrai. You will have read this, and more than this, already in your papers. After we had fired on the barrage for several hours, and our infantry had advanced, we began to move our battery forward by sections. The major was away on leave to Blighty, so the captain was acting O.C. He went forward to observe and reconnoitre; I was left to move up the battery. My own section was the last to move. On the road I was met by a mounted orderly who handed me a written order to join another battery which was doing forward work on opportunity targets. I reported to this battery and had brought my two guns into position on their right flank, when the first shell burst. The gun-teams had not unhooked; it burst directly under the centre team and scuppered the lot, wounding all the drivers and killing one of the gunners. We had got the guns into action, when another shell burst beside the left-hand gun, near which I was standing, wounding all the gun-crew except one man. I myself got a piece in the head, between the ear and the left temple. It was a lucky chance that I wasn't killed outright. The fragment of shell struck upwards and under my steel helmet, cutting the chin-strap and the brass link which holds the strap to the helmet. It was diverted by a rivet in the strap, so instead of going straight into my head, it glanced along the skull. I was X-rayed in France and was to have been operated on, but there was no time with so many casualties coming down, so I was sent to England for the operation. I was in luck to escape so lightly. I was so grateful to my helmet that I hid it in my trench coat and smuggled it back to England with me as a curiosity—which is not allowed.