PART V
I
April, 1918
For weeks, ever since the staggering nightmare of the German thrust in March, we have been marching and counter-marching, entraining and debarking, living in a delirium. I have had no news from home in ages. Heaven only knows where my mail has gone. I can only scribble down a note here and there and wait for a moment that never comes. The war has seen nothing to match this hideous driving tempest of massed artillery. I have ceased to think or to wonder what is in store for me. The imagination, like the body, yields to fatigue and ceases to respond.
We have come back from beyond the English lines to a position of support at X——. The second thrust has rolled through us as it did through the English. Can it be stopped? I begin to lose faith. The sight of this army of refugees streaming through us is heart-breaking. Poor souls, now twice dispossessed from their homes! We have lost in these days all that we fought to recover. No wonder that bitterness has entered our souls: only De Saint Omer remains unfaltering in his faith, cheerful and inspired. But it is not so with the others.
To-morrow I shall have letters from home. An orderly is returning from Paris, and he will stop at the bank for my mail. Thank heaven! Even if it is denied me ever to see home again, it is like a ray of light at the end of winter to know that there is somewhere a calm green world, where Bernoline, Molly and Anne exist.
We go forward in relief to-morrow at daybreak. The tension is terrible.