Item 01: Malcolm Shore Stanley correspondence, 8 December 1916-28 October 1918 - Page 137
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[Page 137]
back to billet too weary to worry over anything, sometimes one is so tired that you envy the dead. There was one chap - a Lancashire lad - on the ridge sitting in a shell hole with his hands on the back of his head, he looked awfully comfortable, so comfortable that I envied him as I pushed along thro the mud, he was quite content, used to almost look for him every time I went up & sort of missed him when they covered him up, candidly there was nothing ugly about it, it just looked as if he had become weary & had sat down to rest, just tired out, really it was a bonnie picture. I never saw anything so remarkable & it will live in my memory when the awful scenes are forgotten. War is dreadful & one does not really live in the body, there is something in you which does not really belong to these hands and feet, it hovers close to the body & feels as though it were ready to take its departure at any moment, you move thro a shelled area realising this strange combination, call it a force if you like, the body obeys its will, I feel it more when my body is tired, amidst the dead it tells you that death is a very little thing, darned funny when you first notice it, but it is so, it seems as though there is something captive around you which is longing to be free, you laugh, you talk but it all seems strange & not your own, these little khaki mounds lying so still & quiet don't belong to your sphere, I feel