'And the sun is shining like blazes on it all. As I came up I saw some of our men resting on the grass by the wayside. They were going up to the trenches--but it was too early--the sun was too high--they don't send them in till dusk. Awfully good fellows they looked! And I passed a company of Bantams, little Welsh chaps, as fit as mustard. Also a poor mad woman, with a basket of cakes and chocolate. She used to live in the village where I'm sitting now--on a few bricks of it, I mean. Then her farm was shelled to bits and her old husband and her daughter killed. And nothing will persuade her to go. Our people have moved her away several times--but she always comes back--and now they let her alone. Our soldiers indeed are awfully good to her, and she looks after the graves in the little cemetery. But when you speak to her, she never seems to understand, and her eyes--well, they haunt one.
'I'm beginning to get quite used to the life--and lately I have been doing some observation work with an F.O.O. (that means Forward Observation Officer), which is awfully exciting. Your business on these occasions is to get as close to the Germans as you can, without being seen, and you take a telephonist with you to send back word to the guns, and, by Jove, we do get close sometimes!
'Well, dear old Pam, there's my engineer coming across the fields, and I must shut up. Mind--if I don't come back to you--you're just to think, as I told you before, that it's _all right_. Nothing matters--_nothing_--but seeing this thing through. Any day we may be in the thick of such a fight as I suppose was never seen in the world before. Or any night--hard luck! one may be killed in a beastly little raid that nobody will ever hear of again. But anyway it's all one. It's worth it.
'_Your_ letters don't sound to me as though you were particularly enjoying life. Why don't you ever give me news of Arthur? He writes me awfully jolly letters, and always says something nice about you. Father has written to me _three_ times--decent, I call it,--though he always abuses Lloyd George, and generally puts some Greek in I can't read. I wonder if we were quite right about Broomie? You never say anything about her either. But I got a letter from Beryl the other day, and what Miss B. seems to be doing with Father and the estate is pretty marvellous.