ht I can just see a field with
tanks in it. Ah--there goes a shell on the Hun line--another!
Can't think why we're tuning up at this time of day. We shall
be getting some of their heavy stuff over directly, if we don't
look out. It's rot!

'And the sun is shining like blazes on it all. As I came up I
saw some of our men resting on the grass by the wayside. They
were going up to the trenches--but it was too early--the sun
was too high--they don't send them in till dusk. Awfully good
fellows they looked! And I passed a company of Bantams, little
Welsh chaps, as fit as mustard. Also a poor mad woman, with a
basket of cakes and chocolate. She used to live in the village
where I'm sitting now--on a few bricks of it, I mean. Then her
farm was shelled to bits and her old husband and her daughter
killed. And nothing will persuade her to go. Our people have
moved her away several times--but she always comes back--and
now they let her alone. Our soldiers indeed are awfully good to
her, and she looks after the graves in the little cemetery. But
when you speak to her, she never seems to understand, and her
eyes--well, they haunt one.

'I'm beginning to get quite used to the life--and lately I have
been doing some observation work with an F.O.O. (that means
Forward Observation Officer), which is awfully exciting. Your
business on these occasions is to get as close to the Germans
as you can, without being seen, and you take a telephonist with
you to send back word to the guns, and, by Jove, we do get
close sometimes!

'Well, dear old Pam, there's my engineer coming across the
fields, and I must shut up. Mind--if I don't come back to
you--you're just to think, as I told you before, that it's _all
right_. Nothing matters--_nothing_--but seeing this thing
through. Any day we may be in the thick of such a fight as I
suppose was never seen in the world before. Or any night--hard
luck! one may be killed in a beastly little raid that nobody
will ever hear of again. But anyway it's all one. It's worth
it.

'_Your_ letters don't sound to me as though you were
particularly enjoying life. Why don't you ever give me news of
Arthur? He writes me awfully jolly letters, and always says
something nice about you. Father has written to me _three_
t