XV
Sunday, September 24th, 1916.
DEAREST MOTHER:
Your locket has just reached me, and I have strung it round my neck with M."s cross. Was it M."s cross the other night that accounted for my luck? I was in a gun-pit when a sh.e.l.l landed, killing a man only a foot away from me and wounding three others--I and the sergeant were the only two to get out all right. Men who have been out here some time have a dozen stories of similar near squeaks. And talking of squeaks, it was a mouse that saved one man. It kept him awake to such an extent that he determined to move to another place. Just as he got outside the dug-out a sh.e.l.l fell on the roof.
You"ll be pleased to know that we have a ripping chaplain or Padre, as they call chaplains, with us. He plays the game, and I"ve struck up a great friendship with him. We discuss literature and religion when we"re feeling a bit fed up. We talk at home of our faith being tested--one begins to ask strange questions here when he sees what men are allowed by the Almighty to do to one another, and so it"s a fine thing to be in constant touch with a great-hearted chap who can risk his life daily to speak of the life hereafter to dying Tommies.
I wish I could tell you of my doings, but it"s strictly against orders.
You may read in the papers of actions in which I"ve taken part and never know that I was there.
We live for the most part on tinned stuff, but our appet.i.tes make anything taste palatable. Living and sleeping in the open air keeps one ravenous. And one learns to sleep the sleep of the just despite the roaring of the guns.
G.o.d bless you each one and give us peaceful hearts.
Yours ever, Con.
XVI
September 28th, 1916.
My Dears:
We"re in the midst of a fine old show, so I don"t get much opportunity for writing. Suffice it to say that I"ve seen the big side of war by now and the extraordinary uncalculating courage of it. Men run out of a trench to an attack with as much eagerness as they would display in overtaking a late bus. If you want to get an idea of what meals are like when a row is on, order the McAlpin to spread you a table where 34th crosses Broadway--and wait for the uptown traffic on the Elevated. It"s wonderful to see the waiters dodging with dishes through the sh.e.l.l-holes.
It"s a wonderful autumn day, golden and mellow; I picture to myself what this country must have looked like before the desolation of war struck it.
I was Brigade observation officer on September 26th, and wouldn"t have missed what I saw for a thousand dollars. It was a touch and go business, with sh.e.l.ls falling everywhere and machine-gun fire--but something glorious to remember. I had the great joy of being useful in setting a Hun position on fire. I think the war will be over in a twelvemonth.
Our great joy is composing menus of the meals we"ll eat when we get home. Good-bye for the present.
CON.
XVII
October 1st, 1916.
MY DEAREST M.:
Sunday morning, your first back in Newark. You"re not up yet owing to the difference in time--I can imagine the quiet house with the first of the morning stealing greyly in. You"ll be presently going to church to sit in your old-fashioned mahogany pew. There"s not much of Sunday in our atmosphere--only the little one can manage to keep in his heart. I shall share the echo of yours by remembering.
I"m waiting orders at the present moment to go forward with the Colonel and pick out a new gun position. You know I"m very happy-satisfied for the first time I"m doing something big enough to make me forget all failures and self-contempts. I know at last that I can measure up to the standard I have always coveted for myself. So don"t worry yourselves about any note of hardship that you may interpret into my letters, for the deprivation is fully compensated for by the winged sense of exaltation one has.
Things have been a little warm round us lately. A gun to our right, another to our rear and another to our front were knocked out with direct hits. We"ve got some of the chaps taking their meals with us now because their mess was all shot to blazes. There was an officer who was with me at the 53rd blown thirty feet into the air while I was watching.
He picked himself up and insisted on carrying on, although his face was a ma.s.s of bruises. I walked in on the biggest engagement of the entire war the moment I came out here. There was no gradual breaking-in for me.
My first trip to the front line was into a trench full of dead.
Have you seen Lloyd George"s great speech? I"m all with him. No matter what the cost and how many of us have to give our lives, this War must be so finished that war may be forever at an end. If the devils who plan wars could only see the abysmal result of their handiwork! Give them one day in the trenches under sh.e.l.l-fire when their lives aren"t worth a five minutes" purchase--or one day carrying back the wounded through this tortured country, or one day in a Red Cross train. No one can imagine the d.a.m.nable waste and Christlessness of this battering of human flesh. The only way that this War can be made holy is by making it so thorough that war will be finished for all time.
Papa at least will be awake by now. How familiar the old house seems to me--I can think of the place of every picture. Do you set the victrola going now-a-days? I bet you play Boys in Khaki, Boys in Blue.
Please send me anything in the way of eatables that the goodness of your hearts can imagine--also smokes.
Later.
I came back from the front-line all right and have since been hard at it firing. Your letters reached me in the midst of a bombardment--I read them in a kind of London fog of gun-powder smoke, with my steel helmet tilted back, in the interval of commanding my section through a megaphone.
Don"t suppose that I"m in any way unhappy--I"m as cheerful as a cricket and do twice as much hopping--I have to. There"s something extraordinarily bracing about taking risks and getting away with it--especially when you know that you"re contributing your share to a far-reaching result. My mother is the mother of a soldier now, and soldiers" mothers don"t lie awake at night imagining--they just say a prayer for their sons and leave everything in G.o.d"s hands. I"m sure you"d far rather I died than not play the man to the fullest of my strength. It isn"t when you die that matters--it"s how. Not but what I intend to return to Newark and make the house reek of tobacco smoke before I"ve done.
We"re continually in action now, and the casualty to B. has left us short-handed--moreover we"re helping out another battery which has lost two officers. As you"ve seen by the papers, we"ve at last got the Hun on the run. Three hundred pa.s.sed me the other day unescorted, coming in to give themselves up as prisoners. They"re the dirtiest lot you ever set eyes on, and looked as though they hadn"t eaten for months. I wish I could send you some souvenirs. But we can"t send them out of France.
I"m scribbling by candlelight and everything"s jumping with the stamping of the guns. I wear the locket and cross all the time.
Yours with much love, Con.
XVIII
October 13th, 1916.
DEAR ONES:
I have only time to write and a.s.sure you that I am safe. We"re living in trenches at present--I have my sleeping bag placed on a stretcher to keep it fairly dry. By the time you get this we expect to be having a rest, as we"ve been hard at it now for an unusually long time. How I wish that I could tell you so many things that are big and vivid in my mind-but the censor--!
Yesterday I had an exciting day. I was up forward when word came through that an officer still further forward was wounded and he"d been caught in a heavy enemy fire. I had only a kid telephonist with me, but we found a stretcher, went forward and got him out. The earth was hopping up and down like pop-corn in a frying pan. The unfortunate thing was that the poor chap died on the way out. It was only the evening before that we had dined together and he had told me what he was going to do with his next leave.
G.o.d bless you all, CON.
XIX
October 14th, 1916.
DEAREST MOTHER:
I"m still all right and well. To-day I had the funniest experience of my life--got caught in a Hun curtain of fire and had to lie on my tummy for two hours in a trench with the sh.e.l.ls bursting five yards from me--and never a scratch. You know how I used to wonder what I"d do under such circ.u.mstances. Well, I laughed. All I could think of was the sleek people walking down Fifth Avenue, and the equally sleek crowds taking tea at the Waldorf. It struck me as ludicrous that I, who had been one of them, should be lying there lunchless. For a little while I was slightly deaf with the concussions.
That poem keeps on going through my head,