It is the sense of sight through which war
makes its strongest impression on me.
The year falls into a series of pictures, evenings of song when a boy
soldier would improvise verses to our head nurse; a fight between a
Belgian corporal and an English nurse with seltzer bottles; the night
when our soldiers were short of ammunition and we sat up till dawn
awaiting the attack that might send us running for our lives; the black
nights when some spy back of our lines flashed electric messages to the
enemy and directed their fire on our ammunition wagons.
And deeper than those pictures is the consciousness of how adaptable is
the human spirit. Human nature insists on creating something. Under
hunger and danger, it develops a wealth of resource--in art and music,
and carving, making finger-rings of shrapnel, playing songs of the
Yser. Something artistic and playful comes to the rescue. Instead of war
getting us as Andreieff's "Red Laugh" says it does, making regiments of
men mad, we "got" war, and remained sane. If we hadn't conquered it by
spells of laughing relief, we shouldn't have had nerve when the time
came. Too much strain would break down the bravest Belgian and the
gayest Fusilier Marin.
I came to feel I would rather get "pinked" in Pervyse than retire to
Furnes, seven miles back of the trenches. Pervyse seemed home, because
we belonged there with necessary work to do.
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