I really think I have tried to adapt myself to my work, for, as I told you, I am proposed for the rank of sergeant and for mention in despatches.  Ah, but, dearest mother, this war is long, too long for men who had something else to do in the world!  What you tell me of the kind feeling there is for me in Paris gives me pleasure; but—­am I not to be brought out of this for a better kind of usefulness?  Why am I so sacrificed, when so many others, not my equals, are spared?  Yet I had something worth doing to do in the world.  Well, if God does not intend to take away this cup from me, His will be done.

March 3 (in a billet).

This is the fourth day of rest, for me almost a holiday time.  Rather a sad holiday, I own; it reminds me of certain visits to Marlotte.  These days have been spent in attempts to recover from physical fatigue and moral weariness, and in the filling up of vacant hours.  Still, a kind of holiday, a halt rather, giving one time to arrange one’s impressions, so long confused by the violence of action.

I have been stupefied by the noise of the shells.  Think—­from the French side alone forty thousand have passed over our heads, and from the German side about as many, with this difference, that the enemy shells burst right upon us.  For my own part, I was buried by three 305 shells at once, to say nothing of the innumerable shrapnel going off close by.  You may gather that my brain was a good deal shaken.  And now I am reading.  I have just read in a magazine an article on three new novels, and that reading relieved many of the cares of battle.

I have received a most beautiful letter from Andre, who must be a neighbour of mine out here.  He thinks as I do about our dreadful war literature.  What does flourish is a faculty of musical improvisation.  All last night I heard the loveliest symphonies, fully orchestral; and I am bound to say that they owed their best to the great music that is Germany’s.

After my experiences I must really let myself go a little in the pleasure of this furtive sun of March.

March 5 (6th day in billets).

I wish I could recover in myself the extreme sensibilities I felt before the fiery trial, so that I might describe for you the colours and the aspects of the drama we have passed through.  But just now I am in a state of numbness, pleasant enough in itself, yet apt to hinder my vision of things present and my forecasts of things to come.  I have to make an effort to keep hold of eternal and essential things; perhaps I shall succeed in time.