"Well, report to me and show me your work regularly.—Tell the Major to speak to me."
The Major spoke, and I clearly heard him say my behaviour was damnable.
This wonderful Colonel expected me to work all day, and apparently, in the evening, to take what I had done and show it to him—the distance by motor to him and back was something like 110 miles!
I saw there was nothing for it, if I wanted to do my work, but to fight, so I decided to lay my views of people and things before those who were above the Colonel. This I did, and had comparative peace, but the seed of hostility was sown in the Colonel's Intelligence (F) Section, G.H.Q., as I think it was then called, and they made me suffer as much as was in their power.
A MEMORY OF THE SOMME (SPRING 1917)
A fair spring morning—not a living soul is near,
Far, far away there is the faint grumble of the guns;
The battle has passed long since—
All is Peace.
At times there is the faint drone of aeroplanes as
They pass overhead, amber specks, high up in the blue;
Occasionally there is the movement of a rat in the
Old battered trench on which I sit, still in the
Confusion in which it was hurriedly left.
The sun is baking hot.
Strange odours come from the door of a dug-out
With its endless steps running down into blackness.
The land is white—dazzling.
The distance is all shimmering in heat.
A few little spring flowers have forced their way
Through the chalk.
He lies a few yards in front of the trench.
We are quite alone.
He makes me feel very awed, very small, very ashamed.
He has been there a long, long time—
Hundreds of eyes have seen him,
Hundreds of bodies have felt faint and sick
Because of him.
Then this place was Hell,
But now all is Peace.
And the sun has made him Holy and Pure—
He and his garments are bleached white and clean.
A daffodil is by his head, and his curly, golden
Hair is moving in the slight breeze.
He, the man who died in "No Man's Land," doing
Some great act of bravery for his comrades and
Country—
Here he lies, Pure and Holy, his face upward turned;
No earth between him and his Maker.
I have no right to be so near.
