I
just ducked in time as it burst on the parapet behind where I was
standing--a splinter caught my tin hat, but bounded off. In spite of
all, this has been a cheery day. One learns to laugh at Fritz's
efforts to kill one, and at the appalling waste of money he spends in
misplaced shells; one laughs still more when they fall in his own lines
from his own guns, and frantic cries of distress and protest, in the
form of colored rockets, fill the air. LIFE, even with all its letters
capitals, has its humors. Dire rumors of the postponement of our
longed-for rest--but what is rumor, after all?

Half of another weary night has passed. I took a morning in bed (five
hours, only disturbed twice) and so raised my sleep average to nearly
four hours a day.

How unreal it seems to be writing with a loaded revolver by one's
paper, and a respirator on one's chest. I bet the Huns are sorry that
they ever invented gas. You make too much of what I did on Monday, it
was nothing wonderful, and had I had time to think, I should probably
have funked it. Instinct and training and the excitement of the
moment--that is all, just my duty. I did see a brave act that morning,
and one that required real pluck, not excitement. I must see a
specialist about the injury as soon as I can get an appointment. Still
smiling.

* * * * * *

A long wooden box five feet by three feet "in the cold, dark
underground." Here we move and sleep and have our being, under one of
the famous battlefields of Europe, a captured German dugout, with
German shells bumping on the roof from time to time. Had I but the
ability I could paint you a word-picture that might bring to you the
wonder of last night's events in their grandeur and their grimness. As
it is I must do what little I can.

A long straying column along a road as darkness fell; turning westward
one saw the splendor of a blood-red sunset where the crimson melted to
gold, the gold to green, so often called blue. Against this the
silhouetted outlines of slag-heaps and pits and houses, now ruined, now
whole. By the roadside little huts some three feet square built by
their owners, who gathered around little blazing fires now that their
day's work was done. The low drone of homing planes filled the air as
one by one they swooped down to earth, or rose on some perilous
mission, while bursting shrapnel added golden balls of fire to the
firmament of heaven, now a d