Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 60

We have now moved as ordered to Le Quesnoy. That is scarcely worth recording now. It is not like the days when first we were out and moves meant endless thought and fret and worry. Now everyone is so used to it and so knows his job that the battalion just flits from one village to another as easily and with rather less fuss than a commercial traveller.

It was a fine day, a fact I am only too thankful to put down. For otherwise we should have had a bad time indeed, the roads – save the mark – being as it was absolutely atrocious and ankle deep in mud in many places.

This, Le Quesnoy, is a much better village than any yet which has suffered from us. We have good billets and the people are kind. I think we shall be all right here.^x

It was quite a send-off from Fourdrinoy this morning. Half the village was out. Papa and the three daughters from our particular billet came right outside the place to see us go and waved handkerchiefs and shouted good wishes as we trudged off. One felt like a bedraggled Lord Mayor’s Show. We must have pleased them better than the last battalion and, personally, I feel quite satisfied with Fourdrinoy. I have learnt quite a lot of French there and will remember it because of that.

Tonight I have had two letters from you, two sweet letters but so full of news and kindnesses that I despair of ever being able to answer them as I would like. My soul, you pour out your love on me, abasing yourself, in the depth of it, before me. You should not. I am so poorly furnished as an inspiration for romance that I am utterly undeserving of such a deep affection as is yours. It is I who should abase myself. It is I who am the fortunate party to our bargain. Believe me, my soul, I am fully conscious of it. And my love for you grows with the speed of the flame in stubble. How else could it be? Every day I see such evidence of your goodness, your thought for others, your bravery and your perfect womanliness that I would be but a senseless clod did my love for you not respond as I say. May our sweet Babe grow into such another woman as her mother. It is my hope that she does.