The rain had started…

‘I am sitting in our tent with the rain coming down in torrents outside – during breakfast (all meals are held out of doors in fine weather) it started to come down and we quickly moved inside to finish – it reminds me of camping to hear the rain pattering down on the canvas and natural thunder is mingling with gun thunder just at present’.

They were still in the camp at Dickebusch, from where, the previous evening, he had again strolled into town with a friend, to do some shopping and have dinner (‘a pleasant relaxation from camp life’). They were ready to move if necessary, and he promised Pips, as he had many times in the past, that he would endeavour to send a letter home whenever he could. But he knew there might be tough times ahead:

‘it is quite a matter of luck even how a regiment fares as a whole – we may be lucky and in a few days be out resting with very little further trouble – or it may be the reverse, it is of little use worrying and hoping, it is of little use worrying and hoping’.

As ever, he was resolved to leave everything to fate, and not try to ‘frustrate’ it by doing anything which he had been told not to, nor by doing anything which was very obviously not the right thing to do. ‘The best thing,’ he had decided, ‘is to continue as one is advised, either by superior officers or by instinct’. He apologised that he could tell his father nothing of ‘Military Interest’, except to note that everyone was ‘as usuall “fed up” but at the same time cheerful to a certain extent – the speculation is “How long?” “Another Winter?”‘

He asked Pips to try to get hold of a pocket edition of ‘Laws History’ [most likely  Edward Laws’ History of Little England Beyond Wales, published in 1888], for he was determined, ‘if I once again find myself safe at home’, to return to his favourite pursuits, and principal among those would be ‘the study of History and Antiquities’. His overall objective was to buy a small farm, and, supplemented by writing and teaching, to free himself from ‘the dependency of the office’ (although he was quite clear that he would return to the office after the war, for as long as it took him to be financially secure).

He thanked Pips for the long letter he had received from him, in which he had noted that he had been gardening on an evening recently which had been just like the one when Sherriff had returned home from leave. ‘How much would not I give for that 10 days over again,’ he sighed in reply, ‘I have dwelled on it so much since – lived it again and again…and come to the conclusion that it could not be improved’.

[Next letter: 30 July]