I really think I have tried to adapt myself to my work, for, as I told
you, I am proposed for the rank of sergeant and for mention in
despatches. Ah, but, dearest mother, this war is long, too long for men
who had something else to do in the world! What you tell me of the kind
feeling there is for me in Paris gives me pleasure; but--am I not to be
brought out of this for a better kind of usefulness? Why am I so
sacrificed, when so many others, not my equals, are spared? Yet I had
something worth doing to do in the world. Well, if God does not intend
to take away this cup from me, His will be done.


_March 3_ (in a billet).

This is the fourth day of rest, for me almost a holiday time. Rather a
sad holiday, I own; it reminds me of certain visits to Marlotte. These
days have been spent in attempts to recover from physical fatigue and
moral weariness, and in the filling up of vacant hours. Still, a kind of
holiday, a halt rather, giving one time to arrange one's impressions, so
long confused by the violence of action.

I have been stupefied by the noise of the shells. Think--from the French
side alone forty thousand have passed over our heads, and from the
German side about as many, with this difference, that the enemy shells
burst right upon us. For my own part, I was buried by three 305 shells
at once, to say nothing of the innumerable shrapnel going off close by.
You may gather that my brain was a good deal shaken. And now I am
reading. I have just read in a magazine an article on three new novels,
and that reading relieved many of the cares of battle.