January 27th.
I got as far as this and then "something" happened. Twenty-four hours
have gone by and once more it's nearly midnight and I write to you by
candle-light. Since last night I've been with these infantry
boy-officers who are doing such great work in such a careless spirit of
jolliness. Any softness which had crept into me during my nine days of
happiness has gone. I'm glad to be out here and wouldn't wish to be
anywhere else till the war is ended.
It's a week to-day since we were at _Charlie's Aunt_--such a cheerful
little party! I expect the boys are doing their share of remembering too
somewhere on the sea at present. I know you are, as you round the coast
of Ireland and set out for the Atlantic.
I've not been out of my clothes for three days and I've another day to
go yet. I brought my haversack into the trenches with me; on opening it
I found that some kind hands had slipped into it some clean socks and a
bottle of Horlick's Malted Milk tablets.
The signallers in a near-by dug-out are singing Keep the Home-Fires
Burning Till the Boys Come Home. That's what we're all doing, isn't
it--you at your end and we at ours? The brief few days of possessing
myself are over and once more stern duty lies ahead. But I thank God for
the chance I've had to see again those whom I love, and to be able to
tell them with my own lips some of the bigness of our life at the Front.
No personal aims count beside the great privilege which is ours to carry
on until the war is over.
All my thoughts are with you--so many memories of kindness. I keep on
picturing things I ought to have done--things I ought to have told you.
Always I can see, Oh, so vividly, the two sailor brothers waving
good-bye as the train moved off through the London dusk, and then that
other and forlorner group of three, standing outside the dock gates with
the sentry like the angel in Eden, turning them back from happiness.
With an extraordinary aloofness I watched myself moving like a puppet
away from you whom I love most dearly in all the world--going away as if
going were a thing so usual.
I'm asking myself again if there isn't some new fineness of spirit which
will develop from this war and survive it. In London, at a distance
from all this tragedy of courage, I felt that I had slipped back to a
lower plane; a kind of flabbiness was creeping into my blood--the old
selfish fear of life and love of comfort. It's odd that out here, where
the fear of death should supplant the fear of life, one somehow rises
into a contempt for everything which is not bravest. There's no doubt
that the call for sacrifice, and perhaps the supreme sacrifice, can
transform men into a nobility of which they themselves are unconscious.
That's the most splendid thing of all, that they themselves are unaware
of their fineness.
I'm now waiting to be relieved and am hurrying to finish this so that I
may mail it as soon as I get back to the battery. There's a whole sack
of letters and parcels waiting for me there, and I'm as eager to get to
them as a kiddy to inspect his Christmas stocking. I always undo the
string and wrappings with a kind of reverence, trying to picture the
dear kneeling figures who did them up. In London I didn't dare to let
myself go with you--I couldn't say all that was in my heart--it wouldn't
have been wise. Don't ever doubt that the tenderness was there. Even
though one is only a civilian in khaki, some of the soldier's sternness
becomes second nature.
All the country is covered with snow--it's brilliant clear weather,
more like America than Europe. I'm feeling strong as a horse, ever so
much better than I felt when on leave. Life is really tremendously worth
living, in spite of the war.