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Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 by Anonymous
page 69 of 143 (48%)
by piling on our woollen things we get the better of it on these nights
in billets. There is only this to say: that to-morrow we go to our
trenches in the second line, in the woods that are now thin and
monotonous. Of our three stations, that is the one I perhaps like the
least, because the sky is exiled behind high branches. It is more a
landscape for R----, but flat, and spoilt by the kind of existence that
one leads there.

Hostilities seem to be recommencing in our region with a certain amount
of energy. This morning we can hear a violent fusillade, a thing very
rare in this kind of war, in which attacks are generally made at night,
the day being practically reserved for artillery bombardments.

Dear mother, let us put our hope in the strength of soul which will make
petition each hour, each minute. . . .

* * * * *

. . . Yes, it gives me pleasure to tell you about my life; it is a fine
life in so many ways. Often, at night, as I walk along the road where
my little duty takes me, I am full of happiness to be able thus to
communicate with the greatness of Nature, with the sky and its
harmonious pattern of stars, with the large and gracious curves of these
hills; and though the danger is always present, I think that not only
your courage, your consciousness of the eternal, but also your love for
me will make you approve of my not stopping perpetually to puzzle over
the enigma.

So my present life brings extreme degrees of feeling, which cannot be
measured by time. Feeling produced, for instance, by beautiful leafage,
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