odd in their paint and ruffles. But what a curious concert. The first
I've seen out here. The comic Scot vastly popular; but even more so are
hideously sentimental songs all about the last bugle and death and my
dead friends under the earth and eternal sleep. You know? However, they
love it, and the dismal piano beats a tinny accompaniment.

Staff officers even are here, and I recognize one Somerset; also Grey,
who was in the Gun section with Dennis and me, now a Captain. Delightful
talking over old times.

_Later._--Into the train again. On the platform beforehand I meet a
gunner subaltern. We talk. He's very well read, and interested in lots
of the things I love so much. We discuss the war. He knows a lot of the
billets I know. Evidently we have nearly met out here often before. What
is that book he is reading? Richard Jefferies? From Jefferies to
Maeterlinck. What has become of him? War so foreign to that mystic mind.
Yet his beautiful abbey in Flanders must be in the hands of Fritz, if it
still exists at all. We talk for about two hours. Then he gets out at
----. I don't know what his name is, and very likely I won't ever meet
him again. But out here one makes friends quickly. There are so many of
us all in the same boat. And one hardly expects ever to meet again. Then
(alone in the carriage) I doze. The electric light in full blaze, and no
curtains are down. Stations rather like bad dreams. Soldiers everywhere.
A great clanking of horse-trucks and gun-carriages. Vast stores of
timber for huts. Bookstalls open all night. These trains seem to hoot
and whistle most horribly. Far more noisy than English trains, surely.
That, combined with all the shouting and clatter of trollies, etc.,
rather racking in the small hours. At 5 a.m. we arrive at ----, where we
all change.