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With his tousled hair and his petulant grimace, this lieutenant might
have been Peter Pan, from Kensington. The night nurse pretended to
chide him. It was a very gentle chiding, but as abruptly as he had
thrown off his clothes he snuggled under them again and said: "All
right, I'll be good. Only I want a kiss before I go to sleep."
I became good friends with that boy, who was a promising young poet,
and a joyous creature no more fit for war than a child of ten, hating
the muck and horror of it, not ashamed to confess his fear, with a
boyish wistfulness of hope that he might not be killed, because he
loved life. But he was killed. . . I had a letter from his stricken
mother months afterward. The child was "Missing" then, and her heart
cried out for him.
Opposite my bed was a middle-aged man from Lancashire--I suppose he
had been in a cotton-mill or a factory--a hard-headed, simple-hearted
fellow, as good as gold, and always speaking of "the wife." But his
nerves had gone to pieces and he was afraid to sleep because of the
dreams that came to him.


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