And get them to cancel that order before it’s the dawn of day.
“Billy, old boy, I love you, I kiss your shiny black nose;
Now, home there.… Hurry, you devil, or I’ll cut you to ribands.… See…”
Poor brute! he’s off! and I’m dying.… I go as a soldier goes.
I’m happy. My Boys, God bless ’em!… It had to be them or me.
Ah! I never was intended for a job like this. I realize it more and more every day, but I will stick it out till I break down. To be nervous, over-imaginative, terribly sensitive to suffering, is a poor equipment for the man who starts out to drive wounded on the battlefield. I am haunted by the thought that my car may break down when I have a load of wounded. Once indeed it did, and a man died while I waited for help. Now I never look at what is given me. It might unnerve me.
I have been at it for over six months without a rest. When an attack has been going on I have worked day and night, until as I drove I wanted to fall asleep at the wheel.
The winter has been trying; there is rain one day, frost the next. Mud up to the axles. One sleeps in lousy barns or dripping dugouts. Cold, hunger, dirt, I know them all singly and together. My only consolation is that the war must soon be over, and that I will have helped. When I have time and am not too tired, I comfort myself with scribbling.
