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VII

It was not long before we broke down the prejudice against us among
the fighting units. The new armies were our friends from the first,
and liked us to visit them in their trenches and their dugouts, their
camps and their billets. Every young officer was keen to show us his
particular "peep-show" or to tell us his latest "stunt." We made many
friends among them, and it was our grief that as the war went on so
many of them disappeared from their battalions, and old faces were
replaced by new faces, and those again by others when they had become
familiar. Again and again, after battle, twenty-two officers in a
battalion mess were reduced to two or three, and the gaps were filled
up from the reserve depots. I was afraid to ask, "Where is So-and-so?"
because I knew that the best answer would be, "A Blighty wound," and
the worst was more likely.
It was the duration of all the drama of death that seared one's soul
as an onlooker; the frightful sum of sacrifice that we were recording
day by day.


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