Nothing seemed to matter very
much. A rat came out-then other rats. I stood there feeling
extraordinarily aloof from all things that can hurt, and--you'll
smile--I planned a novel. O, if I get back, how differently I shall
write! When you've faced the worst in so many forms, you lose your fear
and arrive at peace. There's a marvellous grandeur about all this
carnage and desolation--men's souls rise above the distress--they have
to in order to survive. When you see how cheap men's bodies are you
cannot help but know that the body is the least part of personality.

You can let up on your nervousness when you get this, for I shall almost
certainly be in a safer zone. We've done more than our share and must be
withdrawn soon. There's hardly a battery which does not deserve a dozen
D.S.O.'s with a V.C. or two thrown in.

It's 4.30 now--you'll be in church and, I hope, wearing my flowers. Wait
till I come back and you shall go to church with the biggest bunch of
roses that ever were pinned to a feminine chest. I wonder when that will
be.

We have heaps of humour out here. You should have seen me this morning,
sitting on the gun-seat while my batman cut my hair. A sand-bag was
spread over my shoulders in place of a towel and the gun-detachment
stood round and gave advice. I don't know what I look like, for I
haven't dared to gaze into my shaving mirror.

Good luck to us all,
CON

XXI

October 18th, 1910

Dearest M.:

I've come down to the lines to-day; to-morrow I go back again. I'm
sitting alone in a deep chalk dug-out--it is 10 p.m. and I have lit a
fire by splitting wood with a bayonet. Your letters from Montreal
reached me yesterday. They came up in the water-cart when we'd all begun
to despair of mail. It was wonderful the silence that followed while
every one went back home for a little while, and most of them met their
best girls. We've fallen into the habit of singing in parts. Jerusalem
the Golden is a great favourite as we wait for our breakfast--we go
through all our favourite songs, including Poor Old Adam Was My Father.
Our greatest favourite is one which is symbolising the hopes that are in
so many hearts on this greatest battlefield in history. We sing it under
shell-fire as a kind of prayer, we sing it as we struggle knee-deep in
the appalling mud, we sing it as we sit by a candle in our deep captured
German dug-outs. It runs like this:

"T