My dear Dick,—When you went out from the breastwork that night, along the little muddy path, and whispered me a laughing au revoir, I thought no more of it than of a hundred similar episodes that made up day and night in these mad, half-romantic, unbelievable times. There was nothing especial to make the incident memorable. It was ten o’clock at night and the second relief for the sniper pits had gone out half an hour or so. A frost had started after the previous day’s cold rain, the water-filled crump holes had iced over and the so-called paths through the wood were deceptively firm looking, though in reality one’s feet and legs sank through the ice a foot deep into that ghastly, sticky foot-trodden mud.

I knew your job—to visit the listening patrols and the snipers on the edge of the wood—and I remember thinking that your habit of going out alone without an orderly was foolish, near though the posts might be to the breastworks. However, you were young—four and twenty isn’t a great age, Dick—and I recalled your saying that you would no more think of taking an orderly than of asking a policeman to pilot you across Piccadilly Circus.

The wood was fairly quiet that night, though there were the usual bursts of machine-gun fire, the stray ping of high rifle shots against the branches of the trees, and the noisy barking of that fussy field battery of ours which always seemed to want to turn night into day. The light of the moon let me see you disappear into the shadows, and I heard the scrunch of your feet as you picked between the tree trunks a gingerly way. Then I went along the breastwork line, saw that all was right, found Peter munching chocolate and reading a month-old copy of The Horse-Breeders’ Gazette!—fellows read such funny literature in war time—in his dug-out—and myself turned down the corduroy path to the splinter-proof hut that you so excellently named ‘The Château.’

Dennis and Pip had already turned in and had left me an uncomfortably narrow space to lie down beside them, and they were daintily snoring. Through the partition beyond I heard our company servants doing the same, only with greater vigour in their snore. But my bed was already prepared, the straw was only moderately dirty and odorous, and after ridding my boots with a scraper of some portion of the mud, I thrust my feet into the sand-bags, lay down, coiled myself up comfy in my bag and blankets and went to sleep.

For ten minutes only. Then I suddenly awakened into full consciousness and found myself sitting up staring into the darkness, and the chinks of moonlight coming in below and at the sides of the ill-fitting door. I was listening intently too, and I did not know why. The wood was absolutely quiet at the moment, and Dennis, Pip, and the servants had all settled off into their second sleep where snoring is an intrusion.

I had not dreamt, or I had no recollection of any dream if I had. But upon me was a curious ill-defined sensation of uneasiness. No, I am wrong—uneasiness is not the word. The feeling was merely that something had happened. I did not know where or how or to whom.

Now the one thing one ought not to be in war time is fidgety. It is a bad habit and yet a habit into which it is very easy to drift. So with this thought upon me I deliberately lay quietly down again and attempted to renew the sleep from which I had so suddenly been wakened. Of course I failed. Sleep had gone from me completely, absolutely, and moreover there was a force—that indefinite word best describes it—impelling me to be up and doing. Doing what Heaven only knew! I struggled against the feeling for a minute or two, then I definitely gave in to it. Fidgety or not, I was going out of the hut.

Dennis wakened momentarily as I rose and untied the sand-bags off my legs and made for the door. He muttered ‘What’s the matter?’ heard my ‘Nothing, go to sleep again,’ and did as he was told.

The night was beautiful outside and I stood at the door of the hut shivering a little with the cold, but thinking what a madness it was that had turned this wonderful wood into a battlefield! The sound of a rifle shot knocking off a twig of a tree three or four feet above me recalled my thoughts. Mechanically I felt to see that I had my revolver, and then with my trusty walking-stick in my hand I went up to the front breastworks.

I went along them and found all correct—the sentries alert and at their posts. They were in the third night of their spell in the trenches and in the moonlight they gave one the impression of sandstone statues, their khaki a mass of dried yellow clay. Then I peeped in at Peter and found the youth still munching chocolate, and afterwards I went along to your abode expecting to find you asleep, and found instead that your tiny dug-out was untenanted.

The curious feeling that had wakened me from my sleep had disappeared while I had been making my tour of the breastworks and only now did it reappear. There was no especial reason why I should have been anxious, for a score of things might have taken you elsewhere, but I nevertheless found myself striding quickly back to the little gap between No. 2 and 3 breastworks, the spot where I had last seen you and where you had bidden me good-night. I questioned the sentry. It happened to be Rippon, that quaint little five-foot-three cockney, who, I honestly believe, really likes war and chuckles because he is genuinely amused when a shell hits the ground ten yards in rear and misses the trench itself. He had seen nothing of you since we parted.

‘Mr. Belvoir,’ he said—and you know how he mutilates the pronunciation of your name—‘never comes back the same way as he goes out.’ He gave me the information with a trace of reproof in his voice, as though I ought to have remembered better the principal points of my own lectures on Outposts, which I had so often given the company in peace time. I nodded, walked along to the other sentries and questioned them. They had none of them seen you return. They were all quite confident that you had not passed by them.

I returned to Rippon and stood behind him a moment or two. The cold was increasing and he was stamping his feet on the plank of wood beneath him, and humming to himself quietly. I did not want to seem anxious, but I was. I could not understand what had become of you, where you had gone. I took a pace or two towards Rippon and spoke to him.

‘Things been quiet to-night?’ I said casually.

He started at the sound of my voice, for he had not heard my approach.

‘Quieter than usual, sir,’ he answered. ‘There was a bit of a haroosh on the left half an hour ago and the Gerboys opposite us took it up for a minute or so, but they’ve quieted down since. Funny creatures, them Gerboys,’ he ruminated—‘good fighters and yet always getting the wind up. I remember at Ligny when we was doin’ what wasn’t too elegant a retirement, me and Vinsen was in a farm’ouse....’

I stopped him hurriedly. When Rippon gets on to the subject of Ligny his garrulity knows no bounds.

‘I’m going out ahead, Rippon,’ I said. ‘I’ll come back again this way. Warn the next sentry that I shall be doing so. Give me an orderly, too.’ Rippon looked at me curiously. Perhaps my tone was not normal. Then he bent down and stirred a man snoring in the breastwork beside him. The man stirred uneasily and then suddenly jumped up and clutched at the rifle through the sling of which his right arm was thrust.

‘What’s up?’ he murmured. Rippon smiled.

‘It ain’t no attack,’ he answered. ‘The Captain wants you as his orderly.’

A minute later we had left the breastwork line and were out in front in the wood, our feet breaking through the thin film of ice and sinking over our ankles in the mud beneath. Belgian mud may not be any different from other mud, but to my dying day I shall always imagine it so. It clasps you as though it wants to pull and keep you down, as though, with so many of your friends lying beneath it, you too should be there. We tugged our feet out each step, treading on fallen branches where we could. I tried to trace by footsteps the path you had taken, but failed. I could not think of anything better to do than go out to the sniping pits and question the men there to know if you had visited them.

I turned to the left then and made for number one group, Bell, my orderly, following a pace or two behind. A cloud came over the face of the moon, the night became suddenly dark, and the next moment I had stumbled and almost fallen over what I imagined for a second to be a stray sand-bag.

It was not a sand-bag, God knows it was not! The moon reappeared and I saw it was you, Dick, lying on your side, with your legs outstretched. I bent down when I realised that it was a body, turned you over on your back and with Bell’s assistance ripped open your Burberry, your tunic and your vest. A bullet had gone straight through your heart, there was a little spot of congealed blood on your breast, and—you had died—well, as suddenly and as easily as you deserved to do, Dick. On your face was a smile.

I am not good at analysing feelings and there is no purpose in trying to analyse mine. Indeed, I cannot remember exactly what my sensations were. I had no sorrow for you, as I have never had sorrow for those killed in this war. I do not suppose two men have ever been closer friends than you and I, yet I was not even sorry for myself. I remember that I turned to Bell and said half angrily: ‘I told him to take an orderly, I was always telling him to take an orderly!’

I heard Bell’s irrelevant reply, ‘Damn them Bosches, sir.’ (The men in your platoon had an affection for you, Dick.) Then together we raised you, your wet clothes frozen, your hair matted with mud, and picking up your cap and rifle from the ground, carried you slowly back to the breastwork line, and there wakened a couple of stretcher bearers.

Oh! I’m sick of this war, Dick, dully, angrily sick of it. This world can’t be anything, I know, otherwise fellows like you would be kept in it. For a week or two the fighting is all right; it is amazing, and wonderful and elemental. Then as month after month goes by, when there is nothing in your brain but making your line stronger, when you think in sand-bags and machine guns and barbed wire and bombs, when the stray shot or the casual shell kills or lacerates some sergeant or corporal whom you have had since his recruit days in your company, given C.B. to, spoken to like a father, recommended step by step for promotion and at length grown to trust and rely on—then it begins to show its beastliness and you loathe it with a prolonged and fervent intensity.

Down at the field dressing station half a mile away, the young doctor did what he could to preserve the decencies of death. I stood at the door of the little cottage and looked out into the night. I remember that my thoughts flew back to the immediate days before the war and to a night a little party of us spent at the Russian Opera at Drury Lane, when we saw that wonderful conceit ‘Coq-d’Or.’ You, your sister, I and that young Saxon friend of yours—and of your sister’s too! We had dined at The Carlton and were ever so pleased with life. We had chuckled delightedly at the mimic warfare on the stage, the pompous King, the fallen heroes. Now the mimic warfare had turned to reality and here you were—dead in a ruined Belgian cottage.

I left after a quarter of an hour and returned to the wood, my feelings numb, my brain a blank. The corduroy path seemed interminably long. Sleep was not for me that night and the morning would do to tell Peter, Dennis and Pip that you were killed. Unaccompanied by any orderly this time, I went through the breastwork line to the spot where we had found you. The impress of your body was on the ground; your loaded revolver, which for some reason or other you must have had in your hand, was lying a yard or two away. I picked it up, examined it and noticed that a round had been fired.

I wondered why. You must have aimed at somebody and that somebody must have shot back at you, and the somebody must have been close. You were not the sort of man to blaze off into the blue. I leant against a tree and tried to think the matter out. Our snipers were out on your left, so the shot could not have come from that direction, and a hundred yards on the right was the machine-gun emplacement and the first of the outworks. In between was Potsdam House, that no-man’s habitation into which, before the outskirts of the wood had become definitely ours, sometimes the German patrols had wandered and sometimes ours. We had had a working party there the night before sand-bagging the shell-shattered walls and making the place a defensive or a jumping-off spot, as one might wish.

It was almost unthinkable that any German or Germans could have reached it, for we had a listening patrol fifty yards ahead, but it was just possible that a brave man might have avoided the patrol and have done so. At the thought I made up my mind to move forward, and took my revolver from my holster. My wits suddenly became keen again, my lassitude left me, the sight of the outline of your body on the frozen mud made me angry, wild.

I had only fifty yards to go, but I went as cautiously and silently as I could. I did not intend to be killed if I could help it. I was out to avenge, not to add another life to the German bag. I chose the spot for each step with excessive care. I stopped and listened if my feet were making too much noise on the frozen ground.

Then just as I was about twenty yards from my objective I heard a sound. Stopping suddenly, I listened. Someone was talking in a confused, halting sort of way. A snatch of conversation, a long pause, and then another remark. The voice was so low that I could not make out words, but I had the impression that it was not English that was being spoken. The tone was uniform too, as though it were not two people but one speaking—a curious, pointless monologue it sounded like.

My heart was beating a little more quickly, my fingers clutched my revolver a little more tightly. I knelt down, wondering what to do. The voice came from the ruined Potsdam House, and if indeed a small German patrol had got in there it seemed foolhardy to go alone to meet them. On the other hand, it might be but one person there, though why he should be talking thus to himself I could not imagine. Anyhow, foolhardy or not, I was going to find out.

I moved forward therefore over the intervening yards slowly and as quietly as might be. The voice broke off at times, then continued, and each time that it stopped I halted too, lest in the stillness I should be betrayed.

You remember the little pond at the side of the house, the pond that has at the bottom of it, to our knowledge, a dead Bavarian and an Argyll and Sutherland Highlander? At the edge of it I must have stopped a full five minutes, lying flat upon my stomach and listening to the intermittent sound of the voice. It was clearer now, low but distinct, and at last I knew for a certainty that the words came from a German throat. Occasionally a light laugh broke out which sounded uncannily in the still air. Laughter is not often heard from patrols between the lines, and I was puzzled and interested too.

A minute later I had clambered over the broken-down wall and was in what we used to think must have been the drawing-room of the house. Some time after this war is over I shall return and make straight for this house. I want to see what it looks like in daytime. I want to be able to stand in front of it and look out on the country beyond. I’ve crawled into it a dozen times at night, I’ve propped up its shelled, roofless walls with sand-bags, I’ve made a look-out loophole in the broken-down chimney. I’ve seen dim outlines from its glassless windows of hills and houses, but I am sure, quite sure, that when I see it and the country beyond it in the full glare of a summer sun I shall give a gasp of astonishment at what it is and what I thought it was.

Once inside the house I paused no longer, but, my revolver ready, my finger on the trigger, made straight for the spot from which came the voice.

My revolver was not needed, Dick. In the furthest corner of what we used to think must be the living-room, just near the spot where we found that photograph of the latest baby of the family in its proud mother’s arms and the gramophone record and the broken vase with the artificial flowers still in it—you remember what trophies they were to us—just there was the man. He was seated with his back propped up against the sand-bags where the two walls of the room make a corner, his legs angled out and his arms hanging limply down. It did not take a second glance to see that I had to do with a badly wounded German, but I took a look round first to make sure that there were no others either in the shell of the house or near it. When I had made certain, I returned to him and, putting my revolver within my reach on the floor beside me, knelt down and examined the man. He was plastered with mud, his cap was off his head, his breath was coming in little heavy jerks, and on the blue-grey uniform, just below the armpit on the right side, was a splash of blood mingling with the mud.

What I had done for your dead body I did for his barely living one, opened the tunic and by the aid of my electric torch—it was safe enough in the angle of the walls—examined the wound. It did not need a doctor to see that the man’s spirit was soon going to set out on the same voyage of adventure as yours, but I did what I could. I ripped my field dressing out of the lining of my coat and bound up the wound. Then I took out my flask and poured some brandy into his mouth. He had winced once or twice as I had dressed the wound but had not spoken; I think he was scarcely conscious.

But the spirit revived him and in a minute or so his eyes slowly opened and looked into mine. There was no such thing for him then as enemy or friend. He was simply a dying man and I was someone beside him helping him to die. His head turned over to one side and he murmured some German words. You used to laugh at me, Dick, for my hatred of the German language and my refusal to learn a word of it, but I wished heartily I knew some then. I answered him in English in the futile way one does. ‘That’s all right, old man,’ I said. ‘Feeling a bit easier now, eh?’

He looked at me fixedly for a moment or two and then suddenly summed up the International situation in a phrase.

‘This damned silly war!’ he said.

The remark, made with a strong German accent, was delivered with a little smile, and there was consciousness in his eyes. He finished it with a weary sigh and his hand moved slightly and rested on mine as I bent over him. There was a pool of water beside us in a hole in the hearth and I dipped my not too clean handkerchief in it and wiped some of the mud off his face. If I had felt any enmity against him for killing you, it was gone now. A war of attrition those beautiful war critics term it, and here was the attrition process in miniature. He had killed you and you had killed him, an officer apiece, and the Allies could stand the attrition longer than the Germans. I knew the argument and I have not the slightest doubt it is sound. In the meantime here was a man dying rather rapidly, very weary and only too ready for the last trench of all.

I chatted to him and have no notion what I said. I dare say it is a comfort to have, at the hour of death, a human being by you and a human voice speaking to you. He was quite conscious, the water on his face had refreshed him and had revealed clear-cut, aristocratic features, that had nothing bestial or cruel about them. Just as I had thought about you, so I thought about him. Waste! waste! I felt as though I had met him before, and certainly I knew his type if not the individual. Perhaps too, sitting opposite one another week after week, in trenches two hundred yards apart, the spirits bridge a gap the bodies cannot. I do not know, I do not greatly care.

His voice was feeble, but he seemed to wish to speak to me and his English was that of an educated man, precise and at times idiomatic. He accounted for that almost in his first words.

‘I have been in England on long visits, twice, three times,’ he said. ‘I like England. Germany and England are worth dying for. Also I am Saxon, and Saxony is a great country. Anglo-Saxons, is it not?’

‘Anglo-Saxons,’ I repeated lightly. ‘We have the same blood in us.’

‘Good blood, too,’ he said, glancing down at the little splash of it on his tunic. ‘A pity to spill so much. Will you bathe my face again, it helps me, and I would like to die clean.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ I said. ‘To-morrow morning you will be in our lines—another man.’ He did not answer for a moment, then he said, almost with humour in his voice, ‘That is quite true, to-morrow morning I will surely be in your lines—a dead man.’

Again there was silence between us. He spoke the truth and knew that I knew it. His arm moved: the fingers of his hand pawed aimlessly at the rubble by his side. I half rose and told him that I was going to our breastworks to bring some bearers with a stretcher.

He shook his head and spoke in a voice almost strong. ‘No, please, no! You shall go in half, in a quarter of an hour. I am quite easy here. In no great pain. Death is, sometimes, quite easy. I would like you to stay if you will.’

‘Of course I will stay if you wish.’

‘Yes. Also I would like to speak to you ... I ... I ... killed ... one of your officers ... just now?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I ... saw him fall. As he fell he fired at me too. I am sorry I killed him. Will you tell his ... his ... people so? And tell them, too, that it is just war ... silly, wasteful war. He was a soldier, was he, by profession I mean?’

‘Yes, a soldier.’

‘Then it is his death ... I am only a soldier as all of us are soldiers. In peace I make music, compose you call it. Music is better than war.’

‘Far better,’ I answered grimly enough.

‘If I had lived I would have written great things. I had vowed it. I had in my head ... I have it still ... a ... wonderful ballet. It would have been finer than Petrouchka—as great as Coq-d’Or. And the ballet of our enemies, the Russians, would have performed it.... Enemies! how silly it is.’ He smiled.

My heart beat a little faster. This was madness, sheer madness, for us to be discussing music and the Russian ballet on the battlefield and with him dying. But at the words ‘Coq-d’Or’ my memory had suddenly stirred, and I carried on the conversation eagerly.

‘Coq-d’Or is wonderful, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Where have you seen it?’

‘Where have I not?’ he answered. ‘In Moscow, Berlin, Paris, in London. It is great, astonishing.’

‘In London?’

‘But a short time ago—just before the war. I ... I ... had a friend. I was staying with him. He, too, was a soldier. I forget in what regiment. I was not interested in armies then.’ He stirred uneasily and partially turned over on his side. I put my arm beneath him, moistened his lips with the water. He sighed and began to wander in his talk, the words German, beyond my comprehension. Yet one kept recurring that told me all, everything. He must not, should not die yet!

Only for a minute or two did his delirium last. Then his senses returned and quite suddenly he pressed my hand, and though his voice was fainter the words were distinct and spoken very slowly as though he wished to be sure I understood.

‘I ... I want you to do something for me.... I am sure you will. We are both gentlemen....’ His hand moved to his breast and he made as if to take something from his tunic.

‘In the pocket of my coat, inside, there is a little leather case. Inside that ... a photograph of a lady, of an English lady too.’ (Oh! little world, O narrow little world!) ‘It has been with me through the war. I dare not and would not have shown it to one of my comrades.... When I die I want you to take it out and send it to the Honourable Richard Belvoir. He was a lord’s son, my friend, and the photograph is of his sister. I ... she did not know it, you understand?... I loved her.’

Did she not? I wonder. My thoughts rushed back again to Drury Lane, to the crowded house, to the little quartette of us, you, I, the young Saxon, and Peggy, standing together in the foyer during the entr’acte. Every one of her twenty years had added something to her beauty, and as you and I strolled away and left the other two together, I remember I wondered if we were making a proper division of the quartette and if it was quite fair to the Saxon to leave him to such an inevitable result. I spoke my thought to you and I recall your laughing comment.

Of course I promised to perform the simple duty the dying man gave me. I was glad he had not recognised me. It made the duty easier. Once I had spoken the promise he thanked me and seemed contented. He had little strength left and the end was very near. His body slipped lower down, he tried to speak no more—his breath came more feebly.

The next day we buried you and him side by side in the little clearing at the back of the road. In your pocket is the little leather case with your sister’s photograph in it. I have given it to you as I was asked to do. The crosses in the clearing daily are added to in number. Some day your sister will come to visit the spot. I am writing to her telling her of your death and of the Saxon’s too. But of how closely they hung upon each other I shall not speak. It is enough that she should think a strange chance brought you together in the same part of the line, that death came to both of you and that you now lie side by side.

Chance! What a word it is. It explains nothing, it evades all. I can imagine you, knowing now so much more than we do, smiling at the idea of such a thing as coincidence. I have said that I am weary beyond words of this war. I am sure you and the Saxon were weary of it too. I am not guessing, for I am in some way absolutely sure that the twin shots which disturbed the silence of the night were mercifully winged; that you and he, who must have had more in common than I knew, were sending each other unwittingly the final gift of good fellowship.

Good-night. I am sitting in the dug-out you and I shared. The sound of the artillery has died down. The divisional guns have fired their final salvos at the enemy’s cross roads and dumps. The Germans for once have not even troubled to reply. Pip and Dennis are out with working parties. The new machine-gun emplacement on the right of Madden’s mound, which you were so anxious to have finished, is done. Whatever you may say, I am still not sure that it is rightly placed. Perhaps you know that it does not matter where it is placed!

Some day, somewhere, we shall meet. Till then good-bye, Dick.

Yours ever

Philip.