XXVII

November 6th, 1916.


My Dear Ones:

Such a wonderful day it has been--I scarcely know where to start. I came
down last night from twenty-four hours in the mud, where I had been
observing. I'd spent the night in a hole dug in the side of the trench
and a dead Hun forming part of the roof. I'd sat there re-living so many
things--the ecstatic moments of my life when I first touched fame--and
my feet were so cold that I could not feel them, so I thought all the
harder of the pleasant things of the past. Then, as I say, I came back
to the gun position to learn that I was to have one day off at the back
of the lines. You can't imagine what that meant to me--one day in a
country that is green, one day where there is no shell-fire, one day
where you don't turn up corpses with your tread! For two months I have
never left the guns except to go forward and I have never been from
under shell-fire. All night long as I have slept the ground had been
shaken by the stamping of the guns--and now after two months, to come
back to comparative normality! The reason for this privilege being
granted was that the powers that he had come to the conclusion that it
was time I had a bath. Since I sleep in my clothes and water is too
valuable for washing anything but the face and hands, they were probably
right in their guess at my condition.