Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 41

The house building continues, but very slowly. Up to now it has been mostly talk. In a day or two, however, we really expect to do something, and, personally, I am consumed with a fiendish desire to use up those 12lbs of nails. I feel that to smite lustily upon a nail would furnish some outlet for the awful amount of energy which is fast accumulating within me and causing me, in common with the rest, to fret and fume at the idleness which is now being forced upon us.

Rumour appears to be rife in Manchester that we, their darling ‘Pals’, have suffered heavy casualties. Save the mark. I should think it must have originated in some poor devil in another battalion dying of ennui. That is the only way I can account for it.

It is raining again. It always rains here. For that reason I can never understand why they haven’t a river or two knocking around. But they haven’t, nor even a decent stream. I haven’t seen running water, save the Somme, since we landed. It is rather remarkable when one thinks of it. They seem quite content with their village ponds, which are apparently kept going by the drainage from the ‘middens’, and from which the horses and cattle drink, apparently thriving thereon and so producing a somewhat pleasurable example of perpetual motion.