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[Page 34]
is to be begun next Saturday. Anyway I am to meet Leist tonight and from him should learn something. Tomorrow, perhaps, I will be able to tell you something.
St Gratien, France
4/7/18
Last night after finishing my letter to you I went over to see Leist but found instead old Rentals Fullwood returned from Blighty. He said he was glad to get back and for part of the way had had as companions five very jolly American sisters who made that part of his trip, at least, a pleasure. He brought me some materials which he was kind enough to get for me and gave me various bits of news of different friends. Lambert he saw, back from Palestine, and of his work he couldn't say too much. He did a great deal out there, all small but full of detail and, according to Remus is extraordinarily intimate. I left them at about ten thirty and did a little reading before blowing out my candle. Before going to my billet the usual strafe was well in progress but a little while after blowing out the light the tremendous roaring and bellowing of the barrage which preceded the splendid success which you will have read of before this reaches you, broke out. It is quite impossible to describe but if you can imagine an orchestra made up of drums only all going for what they were worth in a closed room, you may have a slight idea. The strange part about the noise was the peculiar irregular rhythm of it and the way in which uncanny strains of sound threaded through the whole thing; as if a violin had been smuggled in among the drums. The same is to be heard in a big machine shop where a motif sings among the whirr and jangle and crash of the machinery. It reminded me of the march in the Tchaikowsky "Pathetic" Symphony only that it never reached a climax but ever kept droning away.
Other instruments there were too but they played minor parts and without a pause all night long, or at least at every waking interval. At times, owing to their nearness, our passing 'planes drowned their song. It was magnificent and awful, and by the same token it has now, with a lot of daylight yet to go, started again. It, and the real, old indigestion kept me wakeful last night. This morning we got the good news which has grown