Letters to Helen Part 9

As to leave--well let's not talk about that. Every dog has his day.

You know the dog who has been shut up in a kennel for a long time? Or the dog who has been locked up in an empty house for a long time? It'll be a mixture of these.

Well, the day will come.

_November 27._

Can't write properly because it's very cold and I've been riding, and that makes one's fingers like pink bananas. They don't seem to answer to the bridle. There's an awful noise of hissing going on. Hale and Hunt are busy on the horses.

_November 28._

A box will arrive containing another Bristol ball, which I discovered in a cottage here, and bought for 1fr. 50c. Rather a jolly green one, biggish. Also I am enclosing the winegla.s.s from Geudecourt, which I mentioned some time ago. There can't be any harm in mentioning this name, as we have left that area some time now. I have got several sketches of other places round about there, which I hope you will like.

Won't it be fun, when the time comes, looking at them. To-day Hunt came round in a great state about the horses. Jezebel had pulled up her shackle, and was in "one of her moods," as Hunt always describes it. She had been kicking both Tank and Swallow with great violence. He had left Hale trying to get her quiet, and rushed up to report.

She was quiet again when I got down, and Hale had tied her up successfully.

[Sidenote: THE PRUDENT SERGEANT]

But the point of telling you of this episode is that meanwhile it was getting time for the post to go. Prudent Sergeant Marsden (Orderly Room sergeant) observed that I hadn't addressed the letter yet or signed it outside. So he did it himself! "You very seldom write any letters to other addresses, you see, sir, so I thought I'd better address it myself. I thought it would be _inadvisable_ to miss a post, and I thought the young lady would forward it on if it was not for her!"

It made me laugh as I haven't laughed for a long time. Wasn't it nice and thoughtful. He tells me he duly forged my signature in the left-hand bottom corner.

Jorrocks sends his love. "Your little filly" he always calls you.

_November 29._

About leave. There's no more chance of it at present, I think, as we are going up to the line again in a week or two, and we want to work off all the men, who haven't had any leave at all, before moving up mudwards, when all leave will be stopped. We are engaged at present in practically rebuilding and making sanitary an entire French village, and in "training," which means all the old dismal tedium of manoeuvres plus spit and polish.

These villages are most amazingly ill-built. Swallow this morning lashed out on being bitten by Jezebel, and (dear silly Swallow!) instead of hitting Jezebel, she brought down half the wall of the shed in which they live, which frightened her to such an extent, Hunt tells me, that she allowed Jezebel to eat all her food at midday stables.

_November 30._

We move next week, I think, or possibly the week after.

We are not going back to quite the same part of the line, but near it.

It will be new country to me altogether, and to everyone else concerned.

Poor Swallow, poor Jezebel, poor Tank, I'd give anything to shelter you three; but, alas! I fear you are going to have a nasty time of it now.

All clipped, too. It's Swallow particularly that I tremble for. He does so throw up the sponge. Tank copies Bird in everything, so she ought to pull through all right.

_December 1._

[Sidenote: AMIENS CATHEDRAL]

All leave is cancelled again, at any rate in this army--possibly on account of the move, possibly on account of nasty fish in the sea.

However, the telegram says "until further notice," which usually means for a short time only. Not that it affects me, but it's bad luck on some of the men who were just off.

Now about Xmas. I have got a new crop, thank you ever so much, that I bought at a town near here.

A beautiful cathedral town.

With doors all padded up with sand-bags, the great cathedral towers above the town, and is seen for miles and miles. A good effort. What fun they must have had building it. What they believed then they expressed in outward and visible form. What we think now is (or ought to be) very different indeed from what they thought then. But I can't remember having ever seen anything that _begins_ to express what we think (or ought to think) now.

Everyone in the Church of England now seems to me to think _almost exactly_ what was thought when this cathedral was built! If this war achieves nothing else, I pray with all my mind, and all my soul, and all my strength, that all the sects and all the churches may suddenly feel tired of all the 1001 little methods of procedure, and say: "d.a.m.n it all! what does all this ancient paraphernalia mean to us? Is G.o.d quite so complicated and involved as we have supposed? Everything else in the world progresses. Thought progresses. Let us take a deep breath, and realize that religion ought to be more 'into the future' than even Zeppelins or Tanks, please."

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXPLOSION OF AN AMUNITION DUMP The smoke from a large explosion usually a.s.sumes a queer tree-like form and disperses slowly.]

_December 2._

Just been superintending the burying of some horses. A curious job. You have to disembowel them first. Quite ghoulish. And then head and legs are cut off, and the whole is buried in a hole 12 feet deep. Up there they often lie about for some time, and get as smelly as dead human beings. Back here it all has to be done prestissimo.

The strange thing is that, whereas before the war I should have felt sick and possibly dreamt about it, now it seems merely more boring than most other things of the kind.

Up there Tommies and Honourables eat their lunch of sandwiches with lots and lots of dead people in varying stages of decomposition all round. An odour more hideous than anything you have ever imagined. But you get used to it.

[Sidenote: TALKING ABOUT HOME]

"How unpleasant they are to-day," you say to anyone you are with.

And the answer is probably just a laugh. Then you go on (if things are quiet) to discuss an imaginary day at home. You would smile.

We actually discuss everybody's clothes, the things in the room, the shape of the fireplace, the look of the tea-things and the comfiness of the chairs.

And we always end up by saying: "And then after that I shall do absolutely _Nothing_ for a fortnight!"

_December 3._

December. Frost on the trees, all fairy-like in this dense mist. Not a sound. The sun quite small and white and far away. And if we were on the Cotswolds, I expect we should go out for a bit of a walk, just to warm up, after breakfast.

_December 4._

A staff job has been in the air several days. It may or may not come off. I'm not very keen about it in many ways. But I've a feeling that I could do it rather well, and so I'm not sure that I oughtn't to accept.

Jezebel and Swallow have quarrelled. Isn't it awful. Hunt has had to put Tank in between them.

Jezebel kicked Swallow, and the blood fairly spouted out--got her in the leg, and she lost her temper, and began lashing out. Hunt, with great presence of mind, threw a bucket of water over them both. And as soon as they were quiet, dear, good, demure little Tank was put in between them as buffer.

It's a most dreadful nuisance. They used to get on so well together. I hope they will leave that curious little Tank alone. Swallow is as lame as a cat now. The accursed female is very exasperating, I fear. Hunt quite irritated me for a moment when he remarked, after the incident: "Oh, it's all right, sir. She was in one of her moods." I pointed out to him that it was not all right. Whereupon he took it into his head that I was strafing him, and muttered sulkily: "Well, sir, I must say I never did like Abroad."

Which made me laugh to such an extent that I got a sort of fit of laughing (don't you know?) and couldn't stop. Eventually I had to go away. He looked so comic and so dejected, and his use of the word Abroad (as if it were a country in itself) always makes me laugh idiotically. I haven't seen him since, and it will be difficult to explain the apparent frivolity.