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[Page 9]
March 25
and loaned him Clarke's "The Vengeance of Fionn", Shelley his favourite poet.
Posted to T.B.C. £2 on account, ordered Alec Waugh's book of poems, and Gilbert Frankeau's, [Frankau] both "in the press".
A Book list. "Limehouse Nights", "The Tenth Verse", "Rebel Songs", "Dorian Gray", Rupert Brooke, Keats, and "Songs Before Sunrise", "The White Stone", "English Cathedrals", "Walter Pater", "Belgium's Agony", "Fler d'Lys", "Pastorals", "Cadences", "Under the Greenwood Tree" and Ruskin, in A, B and C Section Panniers, in Dispensary Cases, Orderley Room Boxes, and on the Cars.
2.
Later. Heavy fighting in High Wood, and the Boche dead number 200,000. The French counter-attacking now. From Corps.
The shelling of Paris by 9.5, and the nearest point of Boche land to Paris 60 miles away, so the gun must be within our lines!
Our counter-attack on the Somme still to come: still for these there are intact the Guards, Scots and Australians.
3.
Radio back, so lose my babbling job, reserve dresser, as turning in. Raining again, and for the last half hour a heavy bombarding. The first for some days on the sector.
March 26
4.
Turning read "The Queens Room" Scene of Chastelard. Bobby left the book with Murph, he giving it me yesterday.
5.
A talking this morning around the stove – a cold day after a cold night – of the Somme, and a retelling of old happenings, of Bib at Longueval the night we were back from Flers, Bib who naked and swam through the lagoons of mud by Delville Wood, full of rhum, back to the A.D.S., in the hut, sleepily murmuring, "Christ! but I'm cold – m' feet are dead!" – and cupping the candle with his hands, of the Becordel celebrations, of the light rail stunts between Factory Corner & Byzantin – joy rides down hill and over valleys, taking all before us, to the tune "Yer silly barstard!". That line killed none of us, but our casualties about it were heavy.
Morning's rumours, only of the French taking over charge of our Armies in the Somme, in which case there is the reasonable hope that some imagination will be shown beforehand – and less in the official after reports.
Posted home "The Tenth Verse: & to Mrs. H. "Walter Pater" and "Belgium's Agony".
Eric G. Passed to me Daudet's "The Nabob", Lotus Library.
6.
Mail: from T.B.C., John Davidson's "Holiday and Other Poems" and T.L.S. of March 21.
Hodder & Stoughton publishing collected ed. of Leonard Merrick and of Barrie's plays. Heineman two new books of Masefield and verse book of Siegfried Sassoon.