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[Page 41]
October 9
38.
The stunt by the 2nd Division has been fully successful, this morning the Ypres station and Menin Road posts fairly busy.
At Ypres saw Les, he relieved from the advanced aid post. The trip quiet and uneventful. The dead, shell-burst bodies of horses still lie by the Ad. D.S. The guns – the naval guns rather busy, and land in their work. The after flame and smoke from the 12" howitzers near the comforts fund station seemed like the breath of some terrible old dragon. The flame smoke was a touch of colour in a grey and brown landscape: stabs of flame all spotted over it, and rush of sudden smoke in the sky.
Comes the rumour of the French & English attacking on our left, then being successful in gaining their objective, and of the advance begun by Newport.
Yesterday Paddy Hornstein shell shocked, and Jackie Lane wounded: various wounds from thigh down leg.
39.
This afternoon reading Drinkwater's "The Storm". In his preface – a note. Drinkwater says it has always been successful in staging – even before strange audiences.
I enjoyed the reading of it immensely and will read it again. And I am glad now I wrote Mayhew for the 1st impression of 'Olton Pools'.
It's to 'To-Day' I owe the pleasure now in Drinkwater – new to my writers to read.
40.
Tonight I've read again a letter-note I've carried since receiving it – last November, a note of no date, of heading 8 p.m., and folded to the address, 'To Jake's stable companion'.
Dear Old Val, and at Steenwerke Sister Stuart told of your being married. Our talk of Browning and Keats and Brooke, of Procter and of Byron. Two days and we were close friends of no reserves, and our walks in Picardy, they are memories I cherish, and I to think of you married, Dear Val, why?
Walks over lovely hills, and our lives all the same, those lovely swift cloud skies, and great patched hills, of purple new turned earth, and young green, and that white road we were lost o n, that brought us to the crest of a lovely ridge – where it turned by three etched leafless poplars, faint but clear against grey-blue skies. And the rain we were caught in, and our happy anxiety.