“I don’t know about ‘missing.’  We’ve had nothing going on here that has led to any missing.  All our men have been accounted for.  But every few miles along the front conditions alter.  His lot may have been closer up to the enemy, and there may have been a rush and a fight for a bit of trench either way.  In some parts the German trenches are not thirty yards away, and there is mining, bomb throwing, and perpetual creeping up and give and take.  Here we’ve been getting a bit forward.  But I’ll tell you about that presently.  And, anyhow, I don’t understand about ‘missing.’  There’s very few prisoners taken now.  But don’t tell Letty that.  I try to imagine old Teddy in it....

“Missing’s a queer thing.  It isn’t tragic—­or pitiful.  Or partly reassuring like ‘prisoner.’  It just sends one speculating and speculating.  I can’t find any one who knows where the 14th Essex are.  Things move about here so mysteriously that for all I know we may find them in the next trench next time we go up.  But there is a chance for Teddy.  It’s worth while bucking Letty all you can.  And at the same time there’s odds against him.  There plainly and unfeelingly is how things stand in my mind.  I think chiefly of Letty.  I’m glad Cissie is with her, and I’m glad she’s got the boy.  Keep her busy.  She was frightfully fond of him.  I’ve seen all sorts of things between them, and I know that....  I’ll try and write to her soon, and I’ll find something hopeful to tell her.

“Meanwhile I’ve got something to tell you.  I’ve been through a fight, a big fight, and I haven’t got a scratch.  I’ve taken two prisoners with my lily hand.  Men were shot close to me.  I didn’t mind that a bit.  It was as exciting as one of those bitter fights we used to have round the hockey goal.  I didn’t mind anything till afterwards.  Then when I was in the trench in the evening I trod on something slippery—­pah!  And after it was all over one of my chums got it—­sort of unfairly.  And I keep on thinking of those two things so much that all the early part is just dreamlike.  It’s more like something I’ve read in a book, or seen in the Illustrated London News than actually been through.  One had been thinking so often, how will it feel? how shall I behave? that when it came it had an effect of being flat and ordinary.

“They say we hadn’t got enough guns in the spring or enough ammunition.  That’s all right now—­anyhow.  They started in plastering the Germans overnight, and right on until it was just daylight.  I never heard such a row, and their trenches—­we could stand up and look at them without getting a single shot at us—­were flying about like the crater of a volcano.  We were not in our firing trench.  We had gone back into some new trenches, at the rear—­I think to get out of the way of the counter fire.  But this morning they weren’t doing very much.  For once our guns were on top.  There was a feeling of anticipation—­very like waiting for an