[Sidenote:  SAILLY-LE-SEC]

What a wonderful day!  It was snowing all the time, with quite warm, sunny intervals.  Swallow and Tank and Jezebel are all under cover, and I’ve actually got a bed!  You might not call it a bed, but it is a bed, because it has four legs (one of them a biscuit tin).  The place where we were going to has been rather too heavily strafed lately, so they are keeping us back here.

Things are wonderfully quiet, and there are no batteries near us, which is pleasant.  I did want to show you the beautiful river winding in and out of the little hills.  The great river-bed is quite untouched by shells here, and the very sight of it would soothe the most jangled nerves.  Oh, it did look so heavenly this evening.  Thank God for this glorious river.  The snow melted as it fell.  The snow flakes as they touched the river were like fairies taking headers.

December 15.

Isn’t this fine about Peace?

So Fritz would like Peace, would he?  No amount of flamboyant talk can possibly hide the fact that he wants peace.  And it isn’t the victor who asks for peace first.  Carry on, say we.

December 20.

Have you had any of the letters in which I told you how the place we were to have been sent to was too continuously strafed?  And how we were sent to this very quiet and unwrecked place?  And how I’ve got a bed, and how happy the horses are?

About the intelligence job.  Things are hanging fire rather, as the Staff Major, who may ask for me to come away with him to another corps, is now attached to this corps.  So what will be the end of it I don’t know.

Frankly, I am sore tempted for this reason, that I think I could do it rather well.  Of course, each corps does things differently, but, judging from the way in which this corps likes the job done, I feel certain I could tackle it in another corps.  That’s boasting.  But you understand so perfectly.  It would be glorious to be doing something really well.

[Sidenote:  A STAFF JOB]

I can’t be an ordinary soldier.  Too absent-minded—­hopelessly vague and careless.  I live on tenter-hooks always.  What detail have I forgotten?  What order did I give that could be taken two ways?

It’s sad for Pat that his friends are gone.  I feel so murky when mine go, that I understand what it must be for him.  But friends or no friends, broken-hearted or whole, we must damned well carry on!  And that’s all about it.

A perfect letter from old Norman to-day.  He must be quite useless as a soldier, whereas at his own job he stands alone, with a wonderful future before him.  Well, well!  I meant not to grouse to you again.  And here’s a letter nearly full of it.  But there, I made a stupid mistake to-day, and it’s all so boring and beastly.

Anyhow, we are fighting for civilization, and the Huns are, too, in a way.  But our idea of civilization is better than the Huns’ idea.  So we gradually win.