Part 61 (1/2)
I know Don and Dorothy and Dad and Ronny aren't sorry for us. But I'm not so sure of Michael and Mother.--Always your loving,
NICKY.
May, 1915.
B.E.F., FRANCE
My Dear Mick,--It's awfully decent of you to write so often when you loathe writing, especially about things that bore you. But you needn't do that. We get the news from the other fronts in the papers more or less; and I honestly don't care a d.a.m.n what Asquith is saying or what Lloyd George is doing or what Northcliffe's motives are. Personally, I should say he was simply trying, like most of us, to save his country.
Looks like it. But you can tell him from me, if he gets them to send us enough sh.e.l.ls out _in time_ we shan't worry about his motives. Anyhow that sort of thing isn't in your line, old man, and Dad can do it much better than you, if you don't mind my saying so.
What I want to know is what Don and Dorothy are doing, and the last sweet thing Dad said to Mother--I'd give a day's rest in my billet for one of his _worst_ jokes. And I like to hear about Morrie going on the bust again, too--it sounds so peaceful. Only if it really is anxiety about me that makes him do it, I wish he'd leave off thinking about me, poor old thing.
More than anything I want to know how Ronny is; how she's looking and what she's feeling; you'll be able to make out a lot, and she may tell you things she won't tell the others. That's why I'm glad you're there and not here.
And as for that--why go on worrying? I do know how you feel about it. I think I always did, in a way. I never thought you were a ”putrid Pacifist.” Your mind's all right. You say the War takes me like religion; perhaps it does; I don't know enough about religion to say, but it seems near enough for a first shot. And when you say it doesn't take you that way, that you haven't ”got” it, I can see that that expresses a fairly understandable state of mind. Of course, I know it isn't funk. If you'd happened to think of the Ultimatum first, instead of the Government, you'd have been in at the start, before me.
Well--there's such a thing as conversion, isn't there? You never can tell what may happen to you, and the War isn't over yet. Those of us who are in it now aren't going to see the best of it by a long way. There's no doubt the very finest fighting'll be at the finish; so that the patriotic beggars who were in such a hurry to join up will be jolly well sold, poor devils. Take me, for instance. If I'd got what I wanted and been out in Flanders in 1914, ten to one I should have been in the retreat from Mons, like Frank, and never anywhere else. Then I'd have given my head to have gone to Gallipoli; but _now_, well, I'm just as glad I'm not mixed up in that affair.
Still, that's not the way to look at it, calculating the fun you can get out of it for yourself. And it's certainly not the way to win the War.
At that rate one might go on saving oneself up for the Rhine, while all the other fellows were getting pounded to a splash on the way there. So if you're going to be converted let's hope you'll be converted quick.
If you are, my advice is, try to get your commission straight away.
There are things you won't be able to stand if you're a Tommy. For instance, having to pig it on the floor with all your brother Tommies. I slept for three months next to a beastly blighter who used to come in drunk and tread on my face and be ill all over me.
Even now, when I look back on it, that seems worse than anything that's happened out here. But that's because at home your mind isn't adjusted to horrors. That chap came as a shock and a surprise to me every time.
I _couldn't_ get used to him. Whereas out here everything's s.h.i.+fted in the queerest way. Your mind s.h.i.+fts. You funk your first and your second sight, say, of a bad stretcher case; but when it comes to the third and the fourth you don't funk at all; you're not shocked, you're not a bit surprised. It's all in the picture, and you're in the picture too.
There's a sort of horrible harmony. It's like a certain kind of beastly dream which doesn't frighten you because you're part of it, part of the beastliness.
No, the thing that got me, so far, more than anything was--what d'you think? A little dog, no bigger than a kitten, that was run over the other day in the street by a motor-cyclist--and a civilian at that.
There were two or three women round it, crying and gesticulating. It looked as if they'd just lifted it out of a bath of blood. That made me sick. You see, the little dog wasn't in the picture. I hadn't bargained for him.
Yet the things Morrie saw in South Africa--do you remember how he _would_ tell us about them?--weren't in it with the things that happened here. Pounding apart, the things that corpses can do, apparently on their own, are simply unbelievable--what the war correspondents call ”fantastic postures.” But I haven't got to the point when I can slap my thighs, and roar with laughter--if they happen to be Germans.
In between, the boredom is so awful that I've heard some of our men say they'd rather have things happening. And, of course, we're all hoping that when those sh.e.l.ls come along there won't be quite so much ”between.”
Love to Ronny and Mother and all of them.--Your very affectionate,
NICHOLAS.
June 1st, 1915.
B.E.F., FRANCE.
My Darling Ronny,--Yes, I think all your letters must have come, because you've answered everything. You always tell me just what I want to know.
When I see the fat envelopes coming I know they're going to be chock-full of the things I've happened to be thinking about. Don't let's ever forget to put the dates, because I make out that I've always dreamed about you, too, the nights you've written.