You will already have received my first letters giving you my address
over here. The wagon has just come up to our position, but it has
brought me only one letter since I've been across. I'm sitting in my
dug-out with shells passing over my head with the sound of ripping
linen. I've already had the novel experience of firing a battery, and
to-morrow I go up to the first line trenches.
It's extraordinary how commonplace war becomes to a man who is thrust
among others who consider it commonplace. Not fifty yards away from me a
dead German lies rotting and uncovered--I daresay he was buried once and
then blown out by a shell.
Wednesday, 7 p.m.
Your letters came two hours ago--the first to reach me here--and I have
done little else but read and re-read them. How they bring the old ways
of life back with their love and longing! Dear mother's tie will be worn
to-morrow, and it will be ripping to feel that it was made by her hands.
Your cross has not arrived yet, dear. Your mittens will be jolly for the
winter. I've heard nothing from the boys yet.
To-day I took a trip into No-Man's Land--when the war is ended I'll be
able to tell you all about it. I think the picture is photographed upon
my memory forever. There's so much you would like to hear and so little
I'm allowed to tell. Ask G.M.'C. if he was at Princeton with a man named
Price--an instructor there.
You ought to see the excitement when the water-cart brings us our mail
and the letters are handed out. Some of the gunners have evidently told
their Canadian girls that they are officers, and so they are addressed
on their letters as lieutenants. I have to censor some of their replies,
and I can tell you they are as often funny as pathetic. The ones to
their mothers are childish, too, and have rows of kisses. I think men
are always kiddies if you look beneath the surface. The snapshots did
fill me with a wanting to be with you in Kootenay. But that's not where
you'll receive this. There'll probably be a fire in the sitting-room at
home, and a strong aroma of coffee and tobacco. You'll be sitting in a
low chair before the fire and your fingers rubbing the hair above your
left ear as you read this aloud. I'd like to walk in on you and say, "No
more need for letters now." Some day soon, I pray and expect.
Tell dear Papa and Mother that their answers come next. What a lot of
love you each one manage to put into your written pages! I'm afraid if I
let myself go that way I might make you unhappy.
Since writing this far I have had supper. I'm now sleeping in a new
dug-out and get a shower of mould on my sleeping-kit each time the guns
are fired. One doesn't mind that particularly, especially when you know
that the earth walls make you safe. I have a candle in an old petrol tin
and dodge the shadows as I write. You know, this artillery game is good
sport and one takes everything as it comes with a joke. The men are
splendid--their cheeriness comes up bubbling whenever the occasion calls
for the dumps. Certainly there are fine qualities which war, despite its
unnaturalness, develops. I'm hats off to every infantry private I meet
nowadays.
God bless you and all of you.
Yours lovingly, Con.
The reference in the previous letter to a cross is to a little bronze
cross of Francis of Assisi.
Many years ago I visited Assisi, and, on leaving, the monks gave me four
of these small bronze crosses, assuring me that those who wore them were
securely defended in all peril by the efficacious prayers of St.
Francis. Just before Coningsby left Shorncliff to go to France he wrote
to us and asked if we couldn't send him something to hang round his neck
for luck. We fortunately had one of these crosses of St. Francis at the
ranch, and his sister--the M. of these letters-sent it to him. It
arrived safely, and he has worn it ever since.