me from getting close to
my comrades. No, not me, but it keeps them away from me. I think
they regard me strangely. They all talk of submarines. They are
afraid. Some will lose sleep at night. But I never think of a
submarine when I gaze out over the tumbling black waters. What I
think of, what I am going after, what I need seems far, far away.
Always! I am no closer now than when I was at your home. So it has
not to do with distance. And Lenore, maybe it has not to do with
trenches or Germans.

_Wednesday_.

It grows harder to get a chance to write and harder for me to
express myself. When I could write I have to work or am on duty;
when I have a little leisure I am somehow clamped. This old chugging
boat beats the waves hour after hour, all day and all night. I can
feel the vibration when I'm asleep. Many things happen that would
interest you, just the duty and play of the soldiers, for that
matter, and the stories I hear going from lip to lip, and the
accidents. Oh! so much happens. But all these rush out of my mind
the moment I sit down to write. There is something at work in me as
vast and heaving as the ocean.

At first I had a fear, a dislike of the ocean. But that is gone. It
is indescribable to stand on the open deck at night as we are
driving on and on and on--to look up at the grand, silent stars,
that know, that understand, yet are somehow merciless--to look out
across the starlit, moving sea. Its ceaseless movement at first
distressed me; now I feel that it is perpetually moving to try to
become still. To seek a level! To find itself! To quiet down to
peace! But that will never be. And I think if the ocean is not like
the human heart, then what is it like?

This voyage will be good for me. The hard, incessant objective life,
the physical life of a soldier, somehow comes to a halt on board
ship. And every hour now is immeasurable for me. Whatever the
mystery of life, of death, of what drives me, of why I cannot help
fight the demon in me, of this thing called war--the certainty is
that these dark, strange nights on the sea have given me a hope and
faith that the truth is not utterly unattainable.

_Sunday._

We're in the danger zone now, with destroyers around us and a
cruiser ahead. I am all eyes and ears. I lose sleep at night from
thinking so